Thoughts on Community and Eaton's Day!

Memorial Day Monday is once again calling you to come to Eaton and help support the Old Town of Eaton Museum.  

Each year through pies and goodies the museum manages to bring the history of the area to the public and to preserve the artifacts that have been handed down over the past 220 years plus.  Some of our artifact gems date to 1797 and Eaton’s earliest settlers.

Until you get older you never realize how important a role the small town you were born in has played and how it shaped your life.  In actuality it is part of your family because in many cases your parent or grandparents may have come from the town as well.

In Eaton many of the founding families are still here, names that still fill classrooms, societies and eventually come home to rest in our local cemeteries.  History and our American root system are what hold us together as a people, and hold our tree of Democracy upright.

On Memorial Day we celebrate our many veteran’s who served with honor to protect that Democracy.  Eaton the Town and Hamlets were founded by soldiers who served in the Revolutionary War. Here in our cemeteries every war is represented a grim succession of graves.

Community Spirit has made us what we are so we the “Keepers of the Fire” for the community… known as the Friends of the Eaton Museum… invite you and your family to come to Eaton on Memorial Day Monday. We ask you to pick up a bake good, a history book, a garage sale item, a hot dog or a drink and contribute to the Old Town of Eaton Museum.  These donations also pay for this event each year.

This will also give you the opportunity to visit over refreshments with neighbors and relatives… some not seen over winter’s long drudge.  You will also be helping keep open an 1806 stone building that houses the “Past for the Future”. It is nice to remember that memories are still a part of our “Reveries” whether we are young or old!

The event runs from 9 am until 3 pm…the museum will be open from 1 pm until 3 pm and the location is the Old Auction Barn next to the Post Office on Route 26 in Eaton a road once called the “old Skaneateles turnpike”.

Watch the videos below and see some of your relatives and friends or maybe even you much younger....and  remember the many who are gone.

Memorial Day, History, Parades & Celebrations remembered!

 Eaton Field Days in a Bustling Town

The best remembered and photographed times were the “field days” held yearly to celebrate the Fourth of July.  This community, born out of Revolutionary blood felt it a duty to put on big yearly celebration.

The big day (Now Memorial Day) usually started with cannon volley, (This year it will too thanks to Jim Monahan & the Revolutionary War Re-enactors) which in later years is remembered as Patty Miles “firing” his anvil.  This was done by filling the hole in the bottom of the anvil with black powder and setting it off.  Any late sleepers would be awakened if their children had not already forced them out of bed in their excitement to get downtown.

Horse racing was part of the day and baseball games were played in different fields around town, big rivals for Eaton’s team was the Bouckville Bucks.  Food was available everywhere from the churches where the ladies aid put on a dinner, to the food stands on Main Street (front street) and the hotels, some brought their own lunches, but everybody ate.

Town filled with music and people listening, especially when the Eaton Military Band played. In the evening there was always a dance that was well attended at the opera house in town, and the Rebekah Lodge usually served coffee to the attendees, with the dance continuing until midnight.

By the 1920’s, the world was at war; the steam engine plant was closing, water power had given away to electricity, woolen mills were closed, the Chenango Canal had ceased to be a transportation route and was only used to fill the Erie Canal, the “Great Depression” was on and the march to the city for work began.

No more does the anvil fire, and only once every three years is there a parade and “History Day” now on Memorial Day,  (instead of Field Day on the Fourth of July) in Eaton, however the memories live on in this rural community, remembered most of all for its once glorious past replete with famous Eatonites, famous inventions and stories of the wars, Eaton like so many of its rural counterparts has gone to sleep except on special Memorial Days.

So come out to Eaton this year and enjoy a parade, cannon blasts, history & commemoration at the cemetery & museum, bake goods and ice-cream social...step back in time...savor...

and remember!

Musings on Community Spirit, Old Hometown Days, Memorial Day and the importance of museums!

A few members of the group!

This has been a busy week for our little group of workers.  Trying to put on a community event takes time, effort and of course, money. 

It is interesting to think back to Roman times and realize that to be a citizen of Rome you had to earn it.  “Citizenship” was something to be prized.  Today we here in America seem to take that privilege for granted.  As a matter of fact we think that the community owes us… rather than we owe the community our help and our neighbors our support.

I had a visitor this past week who I discussed this very issue with… he called it “taking pride in your community”.   I call it “Community Spirit”… that something that bonds us together. 

In rural areas we have lost much of our community to the centralized school systems that have taken children out of their small town areas and melded them as one with surrounding areas.  Syracuse has tried to change that by putting up signs denoting the different sections by there historic names…Tip’ Hill. The Valley, Onondaga Hollow..etc, something to bring little area’s together as “communities” of people.

Another thing that has deprived us of community pride is the removal of names because of post office closings in areas.  Today places that once had pride in their accomplishments are actually listed as being in another town because of Post Office delivery.  For instance Heritage Farms, something a community could be proud of, is listed in Bouckville because of its post office… when it is actually in Eaton and the people of Eaton give it the tax break.

Community spirit or pride in one’s community are things that we need to work on in these troubled times.  That is actually a good reason to support our historical societies and museum groups; I call these groups the “Keepers of the Fire” for our communities.  They are places where we still feel connected to those who lived where we do in the past.  That piece of Americana we try to capture in a movie or a TV show like “Little House on the Prairie”.

We don’t have to look for it…  we are lucky enough to have it right now in our small rural area.  To insure keeping it alive our little group has been working to put on Eaton Day!  It is a community event that hopes to bring all of the Town of Eaton residents and former town residents back to their fabulously historic roots.  Some places call them Old Hometown Days… we just call it Eaton Day!

So come together on Memorial Day Monday and enjoy the parade and hang around, visit the museum, see the crafts, bake goods and savor our piece of Americana with this community event.

The Town of Eaton does not in anyway financially support this day… it is put on by your neighbors and the museum.  If you can make a small donation to help defray costs… visit the website www.historystarproductions.com, click on Donate to Eaton Day at the top… or better yet come out and participate with members of your “community”!!

Genesee Country Museum, Madison County History, and the country poet!

The fall in all of its colors has started to envelop Central New York and for fun my little "history circle" of history friends... took to the highway to take advantage of the Smithsonian Magazines "free day" at a museum.

The ride took us to scenic Mumford, NY and the Genesee Country Village.  The village is a living history museum on its own, that includes tons of historic houses, businesses and buildings that have been moved to the site and restored.  The village also contains and Art Museum and a Nature Center and I assure you you can not see it all in one day.


The barns and shops scream history and you can actually picture yourself walking around in the Disney movie Pollyanna.  The collection includes houses and buildings from the 1790's to the Victorian Age.... and has everything from farms to the local Post Office, all taken back to how they looked when they were built and used.

I so wish Madison County with all of its historic buildings in decay would realise the need for preservation and laws prohibiting the removal of historic structures that in the worst case are replaced by cheap trailers.

This week  also brought Madison County Historian Matt Urtz and hardworking Bruce Burke up to my historic building favorite... the Old Town of Eaton Museum.... to film "a historical insights" piece for the PAC 99 station in Oneida, that will air this week on Tuesday!

The museum building is the oldest stone building in the Town of Eaton, and it is a prime example of a structure that cannot be replaced..it is a rubble building..once mistakenly called a canal era limestone building.

This makes me think of a poem I did many years ago that I include here for your enjoyment. (I hope!)

Small Country Town

Small country town, your praises I sing!

Up with what is old!

Buried in your graveyard,

Now moss covered and fallen,

Is an age of birth,

Back to our nation’s beginning.

As I gaze at the town below,

I can see the old stage

With its old driver bent, riding away.

The town’s bustle now a mere hum,

Cars rolling by one by one.

Your people I salute, for they still persist,

As their past on the cemetery hill sits.

Families untouched by time, still close,

Though taken away by work,

And returning again at dusk.

I praise your farmer,

Who works from dawn to dark,

Full knowing his family heritage,

Has given way to progress,

Yet continues to plod along.

Hold on! For we need you as a nation!

Hold on for all that is good and fine!

To the preacher and his Sunday flock,

Whose church can only stay as a community faith.

To the small businessman who must make his word good,

For he faces each man day after day. 

Bless them Lord

And give them strength to continue,

So the country shall not want.