 By: Dave Boling Sometime this past summer I read in the Lakesider there would be a telescope available in the park that night and all were invited to stop by and view the stars. It reminded me of something I had read one time at the Heritage Hall Archives. His name was Rev. Dr. Ephraim Llewellyn Eaton, he went by his initials, E. L. E. L. was a preacher, a singer, author, prohibition advocate and astronomer. Described as a “gifted speaker with a rich, clear voice, an abundance of humor who knows how to tell a story.” He was a Lakeside speaker in July 1894, '95 and '96. His lectures were a blend of theology and science. As reported in the Lakeside Daily News, E. L. began his 1896 lecture by saying that he had brought his telescope - described as an equatorially mounted 4 and 1/2 inch Clark telescope driven by sidereal clock - with him and invited everybody to “come and look at the at the planet Saturn and its rings.” Dr. Eaton saw the study of Astronomy as an antidote for many theological errors. He promoted his lecture as “God’s Glorious Universe or a stroll through the Milky Way.” Using lantern slides of celestial objects such as the sun, moon, planets, stars and comets he taught ‘‘The Bible and Astronomy teaches things alike. There is one God and Astronomy teaches the same truth by showing that the same laws work throughout the universe.’’ He would lead his audience through examples where science had proven the allusions in the Bible.   Ephraim Llewellyn Eaton was one of the largest draws on the Chautauqua Circuit. He also pastored churches in Iowa, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. E. L. died in Madison, Wisconsin at the age of 85 he had been a Methodist clergyman for 47 years connecting the mysteries of the universe to the glories of God and teaching his audiences how to hold them both. He added to chautauqua experience that left people gazing upward to the stars.
Sources: The Lakeside Daily News, July 30, 1896 Newspapers.com
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 Researched and written by David Glick It was 1954. As a young "full-summer Lakesider" we are standing in front of the 1905 fire station, thinking about helping to tear it down to begin construction on the new building - which remains today on Second Street as the Lakeside Laundromat. "Full-summer Lakesiders'" knew most of the "Locals," as these were the men and women who taught in the local schools, waited on you in the stores and restaurants, painted your cottages, and kept the village alive during its ten-month "off-season." While "Summer People" tended to come and go from one year to the next, the Locals - like the dock - were sure to be there when the new season beckoned. An elderly "local," Frank Baldwin, walked up to us at the fire station and began to tell us a wide range of stories about the seven General Managers he had lived under in Lakeside. We were especially interested in Mr. Baldwin's unflattering memories of the reign of Rev. C. W. Taneyhill, who left town 50 years earlier. Was Mr. Baldwin a typical local or someone with a rusty, fifty-year-old ax to grind? We decided to see what we could learn about the elderly gent. The lakeside Heritage Archive provided a wealth of information on Frank Baldwin. He was born c. 1882 in Alexandria Bay, New York. In 1902, he and a brother, Ford Baldwin, came to the Peninsula to operate the former St. Marie and Ward Grocery store in a small frame building on the site of the present Starcher Enterprises building in western Marblehead. What brought them to Marblehead remains a mystery, but, like so many other locals, it provided a direct link between Lakeside and Marblehead merchants.  Image Courtesy of Lakeside Heritage Archives. Carroll Store, 1905. In 1905, the Baldwin brothers left their Marblehead business. There is no record of where Ford went, but Frank came to Lakeside to join the Carroll Brothers, who were occupying a brand new cement block general store, where Sloopy's Sports Cafe is housed today. The building had replaced a wooden store that had been destroyed on the same corner by the big fire of February 2 of that year. Was it romance that brought Frank to Lakeside? On March 26 of 1906, after merely a few months at the Carroll store, he married his bosses' widowed sister, Mary Jane Capes. She was one of five Carroll sisters. In 1894, Mary Jane had married Albert L. Capes, who had worked for Kelly Island Lime & Transport Company. They were blessed with two children: Carroll A. in 1895 and Helen A. in 1896. But Albert Capes suddenly passed in 1900. So by 1906, twenty-four year old Frank Baldwin was a stepfather of two and an extended member and employee of the Carroll family - a true Lakeside Local. A brief summary of some of the events of Frank's Lakeside years: 1921 His twenty-five year old stepdaughter, Helen (a Danbury High School graduate) lost her battle with tuberculosis. Around this time, Frank left the Carroll Brothers Store after 16 years of employment and became the local agent for the Prudential Insurance Company. 1930 He built and occupied the fine cottage that remains at 203 Lynn Avenue. 1931 He was one of eighteen Locals admitted to membership in the Lakeside Volunteer Fire Protective Association, the first new group of men admitted since 1905. 1936 His wife of thirty years, Mary Jane, passed at the age of 59. 1937 He moved across Second Street to 185 Lynn as a boarder in the home of Jennie Mapes, who had become a widow earlier that year after her husband, Earl Orlo Mapes died. He spent the next nineteen years as her boarder, an arrangement quite common before retirement homes were widely accessible. 1940 He sold 203 Lynn Ave. to another Local, Leroy "Roy" Luebcke, who was Lakeside Superintendent of Grounds. 1954 His stepson, Carroll, died at age 54. May 24, 1956 Frank Edwin Baldwin, aged 73, died in Magruder Hospital after an extended illness. Appropriately, his funeral services were conducted by Lakeside's General Manager, Dr. Herbert Thompson. He was survived by his brother and former partner in the Marblehead store, Ford Baldwin of Oberlin, Ohio.  Image Courtesy of the Lakeside Heritage Society Archives. Dedication of the Fire Department Cornerstone, October, 1954. From L to R: Frank Baldwin, Harry Englebeck, Bill Brown, Scrappy (the Brown's dog), Chief Jay Juby, Fritz Porter, Al Kelso.
Thus Frank Baldwin was a fairly typical Lakeside Local - having close relationships with fellow winter residents, owning a home on leased land under seven general managers whom he had no vote in electing. But he did his part in making a Chautauqua resort a real community, serving his fellow Locals, as well as the Summer People in a number of ways, including protecting the village and its surroundings from fire. Could it be that while the vast majority of Independent Chautauquas disappeared, Lakeside survived, at least partly because Locals like Frank Baldwin kept it alive? |
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