The Blizzard of 1888, as told by Mary Hull, April 12, 1970
First draft transcription
Participants:
Interviewer: Peter Ely (PE:)
Mary Hull
(MH)
Clarence Davis (CD) - I cannot identify his voice on the tape.
PE: I'm here with Mary Agnes Hull, daughter of Lily Davis
and Charles Hull, born in Ansonia, Connecticut on April 12th, 1878. Also with Miss Hull today is Clarence August
Davis, son of Edward J. and Lily Gillette Davis, born in Great Hill,
Connecticut, on February 24th 1885. This is the anniversary of Miss Hull's 92nd
birthday on April 12, 1970.
Off-tape:
Interviewer asked Miss Hull if she remembered the Blizzard of 1888
MH: Very well, Just as if it were yesterday, and Clarence
was only 3 years old and he remembers it.
We are talking now about the Great Blizzard of 1888. It was the only blizzard we ever had. People may call a bad storm a blizzard, but
we never had but one blizzard in the memory of white men. I know that’s true.
PE: What was the date of the blizzard?
MH: Well on Saturday
we all went down to Derby -- East Derby -- to celebrate my Great-grandmother
Green's birthday.
PE: What was the date?
MH: The Blizzard was in 1888. It started on March 10, as I
remember. That was Sunday. I was born in 1878.
That would have made me ten years old in April of that year. I wasn't
quite ten.
PE: What is your name?
MH: My name is Mary Agnes Hull, (laughs)
PE: What happened on Saturday?
MH: Grandma Green's birthday, and I don't know whether it
was her ??, but I think it was. We all went down there and carried food and had
a big celebration. It was a bitter
day. There was no storm visible, but it
was gray and oh, so cold. We had to
ride in an open wagon, you know. The horse was all loaded down with all the
family – five persons. Didn’t go very
fast. I guess the roads weren’t very
good
We got over there, and I can remember the celebration. When we got home, the house was warm because
Grandma and Emmeline were living then, and they kept the fires. That was Saturday night. Sunday morning it
was still gray and miserably cold. But
my mother always went to church, no matter what, so we all got ready and we
went to church and we nearly froze to death on the way home. I did anyway. I used to get out and walk up the hill just
to warm my blood.
I think sometime that noon, around early afternoon, it
commenced to snow. I could remember
Grandma coming to the front windows there in our living room and looking out
the window. Then there were no trees on that land across the road -- it’s now
all bushes and trees. There were no trees across. It was all clean, open
meadow. I can remember Grandma could see across the road. In the meadow over on the other side there
was kind of a plateau like a bench – It was not a river bench, but a brook
bench. She could see Mr. DeForest who lived up opposite the church, I think.
She could see him going down in the meadow across, toward the barn, which was
way down about on the level with the Hornet folks. That was the all filled with the summer’s crop of hay. It had an open shed on the south side and
cattle could all go in there, you know, to get warm. You had to go over there every once in a while and pull down the
hay. It looked like a bad storm, so he
was doing this for someone else. I don’t know just who.
He went over there.
He never owned anything himself.
Grandma could see him walking along there. It commenced to snow and the
wind was biting and the temperature was way, way down. It was only 13. Grandma said she was afraid Isaac would
never get back home.
His first name was Isaac. They all called him Isaac, of
course. He worked for us a great deal. He was the kind of person in those days
that always worked for somebody else (farmer, you know) and always lived in a
rented house. He was a real good man.
He had a regular shrew of a wife, but he was a good man, and father liked him
first rate. He did get back home and he
pulled down the hay for the cattle and didn’t any of them die of starvation
over there.
But the next day you couldn’t possibly see across the
road. By that time the storm had
collected to such a degree that, I would say, you couldn’t see your hand before
your face, hardly. It was sleet – it
wasn’t snow. It was real biting stinging particles of ice. It didn’t come from
the northeast where all storms were supposed to come from, it came from the
Northwest, as if it had been born on the Rocky Mountains you see, and it came
across all that area to the Atlantic coast.
Well, we children -- there was no school, of course. Father
wouldn’t even let – Alfred had always done the milking – father was never a cow
man and he didn’t milk. But he wouldn’t let even Alfred who was then twelve
years old and nearly 13 (he would have been in June). He wouldn’t let Alfred nor me nor John go out the door at all. He
ordered us not to go out to go out to the toilet which was across where it is
now. We were not to go to the barn and
not to go to feed the chickens.
Fortunately the cows didn’t have to be milked because it was
just before they came in with their spring calves, you know. There’s always a
period then when they don’t milk. So they didn’t have to be milked.
Father tied the new clothesline to the back door. There was
one those handles on the door. He tied
it to that and then he hung on to it played it out until he got it down and he
went in on the backside in the barn, you know. You could go in under. He went
in there and fastened the clothesline there. Then when he went back home he
took hold of the clothesline. You don’t have any idea. I never seen a storm
since when you couldn’t find your way right around own dooryard. He was afraid,
you know, that he would be wander away and never be seen again. There were
quite a number of people that were.
You, know, there was the washerwoman down in Ansonia. Went
to do her Monday washings. She never got home. She started for home. She got
lost in the storm. Her dead body was found afterward in the snowdrift. She never reached home. And I could tell you similar stories to
that, but I won’t take time now…
Anyway, we children didn’t have to go to school. You know, children always like something
that’s exciting and different. We didn’t realize how serious it was. We thought it was great fun. It snowed all day Monday and all night
Monday night and all day Tuesday. I
don’t think it stopped until Wednesday afternoon or Thursday. It snowed, and
the wind blew a terrific wind and it snowed out Grandpa (Hulett Julis
Tillis:??)
There was a little road that went in that way. A house in
front on the main road and everybody used that side door, not the front
door. The whole side of the house was
covered with snow so the only light they had was kerosene lamps. Clarence
remembered that, and he remembered how when the storm was over they had to dig
a tunnel through the snow to get out onto the driveway.
I remember that. Of course he was only three years old in
February. I think that’s a pretty good memory, and he remembers all that. Well, we children, you see, as the sun shone
every day for days after, it thawed the top and then the top would freeze. It
finally got so that we children could walk on it. And then it was great
fun. The snowdrifts went right up
against the barn and the cow shed down -- I don’t know as you remember the
cowshed .. that went down a long time ago but it was right there back in the
corner of the barn yard. The snow drifts went right up to the roof of the
cowshed. We could go on the crust. We
took our sleds right up to the top of the ridge of the shed and slid right down
off the ridge (inaudible). We had a grand time. We didn’t have any school for three weeks. Nobody went by our
house. The road had been ground in until it warmed, so it left a high
bank. This bank had a stone wall that
was above our of our house and this one had another stone wall. And the road
was just a narrow dirt road. No one
went over that road, not any vehicles nor any person on foot for three weeks. Finally, one day we children were always out
with our sleds and so forth, rushed in to tell our folks that someone was
coming down the road.
It was three telegraph men. You know the telegraph line that
went down by our road. Well that had
been there for years. They went from
Boston to Chicago. If you followed those lines you would come right out in
Chicago. They were walking. They
couldn’t drive. They were mending the lines that had been broken in the storms.
Each one carried a great big roll of copper wire. Very heavy. I can
remember they walked along and here was the roll of wire and each one had one.
They were looking at the poles and I think they marked every pole that examined
that was all right.
They didn’t pay any attention. This line went across the
road down by Mrs. Hornet and came out over on the River way up there almost by
the little cemetery. They followed the lines – they didn’t follow the
roads. They were the first persons that
we saw go by our house, and it was three weeks later.
Easter came and father and mother had been for years to
Christ Church, Ansonia, and they missed it very much. It was a very wide-awake
church. They always had a smart minister and a large congregation and a nice
choir. It was in the old church down on Main Street right opposite where the
First National Store is now [1970]. Well, Father and Mother must have talked it
all over before they got up, because when they got up for breakfast they told
us children that we would have to stay home and take care of our Grandma and
Emmeline and get the meals because they were going to Ansonia to go to Church.
They were going to walk, and by that time there was so much
crust, you could walk on the crust, you know. And the way they went, they went
right up over the hill in back of our house and went across the swamp there and
on up that hill, and came out on what is now Benham Road. You see, that made a
short-cut. And then they went on up over the top of Great Hill and when they
got part way toward Ansonia, there was a path went off to the right and you
take that and you’d come out right back of our house on Hull Street. We always
took that road if we had to walk. It made a very much shorter trip. They took
that trip and they walked down there and went to the Easter Sunday services.
It shows what an active woman my mother was. Of course my father was 20 years older, but
at that time, if I was 10 years old, my father was – let me see, he was 43 when
I was born, so now he was not quite 53. His birthday didn’t come until June,
you see. He was a good father. So they went to church down there and walked
back on the crust. (chuckled)
PE: How was the snow piled around your house?
MH: Oh, it went way up, you know.. Of course our house is
sheltered there. We’re down a hill. You
know the road goes up and on the other side, where a line of trees is on the
water company side and then on our side it was
the woodlands up there and the hill. We were protected. There was never
wind there like there was up on Great Hill.
When I taught school, I’d think that I would be blown away nearly, and
when I got home, it was seem just as if I had struck a haven of peace, it was
so quiet and nice.
Of course we had some big drifts and the roads were full
from the top of the walls to the top of the walls. It didn’t look as if we were ever going to get out of there. We never would only Old Sol helped us. You see, the blizzard came in March and in a
couple of months it was warm weather.
Tthe snow drifts in the hollow meadow remained until after haying when
father got hay over in the hollow meadow. You know where the hollow meadow
is? Over the hill down there.
PE: Over the hill, behind the house, in back of there?
MH: Yeah, there’s a fence around it, you know. He used to
cultivate it for potatoes and corn. And then have a grass (inabudible). Over
there father was moving the grass that year and just over the fence, on the
side toward us, there was still a great big snowdrift that was packed down, and
it hadn’t thawed yet. That was about the first of July. We never did our haying
in June. We always did it in July. So
you could see how long lasting it was.
PE: What are the stories about outside of the house. Did
anyone else go out to the barn?
MH: Beside Father?
Well, I only remember that. I don’t remember how many days he kept us
from going outside. We were only allowed to go out …
PE; Did he make tunnels?
MH: No, he didn’t have to make tunnels. Our house wasn’t as
exposed. He could dig away the snow.
PE: When you were in the house during the storm, what were
some of the things you did?
MH: Oh, of course, everybody would come in and say, ‘Oh, I
never saw a storm like this before.’ Grandma would say, ‘I’ve lived here all my
life and we never had a storm like this.’
And one of the big excitements was down in Squantum, up there on that
hill where the summer hotel is now,
PE: What is the name of it?
(No answer) (inaudible)
MH: I was going to tell you what happened on Monday. That house up on the hill that Mrs. Neil
later owned was bought by a man and his wife from New York, as I remember. They were in the milk business. (inaudible). He had a very pretty wife with a little baby. He got up early
Monday morning and started to take his milk down to Derby to deliver it. It
usually took him just about so long.
His wife knew just how soon he would be back, but he didn’t come. He didn’t come, and he didn’t come, until
she got so worried. There were no telephones in those days. She had a little baby and was there alone,
and she didn’t know. Well, she couldn’t
have gone down and notified the people that lived down in Squantum, you know
how Squantum is down that hill.
PE: At the foot of the hill?
MH: Well, its on the border at the river. All along on the road that goes down to
Derby. You know where Miss Mendel lived, don’t you?
PE: By the Hill, the elms?
MH: All the people
were down in there. They called it Squantum.
She wanted to notify them but she couldn’t take her baby out in that
storm and she didn’t like to go and leave it.
She went out and stood on the brink of the hill. You know, it’s a high
hill there. And she screamed and screamed and screamed until finally Frank
Smith who lived in Squantum heard her. He came out and managed to get a message
to her. She told him that her husband
hadn’t come back and that she was terribly worried about him. So he got together several men and they went
out as a rescue party. When they had
gone about half way to Derby they found the horses. They were coming home, you
see, and facing the north, but the storm was so severe the horses refused to go
any farther. They had worked their way
through all that snow. They had turned aside and for protection from the wind
and so forth, they had gone up to the trees and bushes that were on the side. He was with them but he was practically
unconscious, almost dead from exposure.
They got him home and took care of the horses and everything. But he
never got well. He suffered – he was a
great big … (inaudible)
Next July he died of a low fever. I think it was typhoid or
something, but everybody thought that it all dated from that exposure. She went
away, I don’t know where. You’ll see
his grave in the little cemetery there. That Clarence used to mow.
PE: Down at the
bottom of Squantuck to the right?
MH: Where Clarence used to mow. His father and two little babies are buried there and her husband
was buried there. We always kind of
thought they were Jewish be we weren’t sure.
PE: What were some of the stories up on Great Hill? Up there, did they have it a little worse?
MH: They always did better on Great Hill as far as roads are
concerned. Of course they were almost all in the milk business but there
weren’t many milking cows just then. More people went over the top of the hill
and sooner the road was broken out earlier than our road. Now our road is a State
road, you know, and they clean it off as clean as a whistle, almost, so you
couldn’t slide down hill on it.
Right away in the night when this storm
came, (inaudible) they don’t do the driveways.
We used to think that if we could get up to Great Hill we
could get to town. But we couldn’t get up there. I don’t remember, but I do
remember what happened over at WildCat.
Grandma and Grandpa Davis were living there and Uncle Michael and Aunt
Carrie.
(inaudible_)
Uncle Michael and this winter had been a hard winter, I
think, all along. He found it pretty hard to come home every day, so he was
boarding over there. They had a lot of stock in a great big barn way down on
the corner at the head of that steep hill, you know, where the road used to go
down.
PE: What road?
MH: On the road that
goes down to Wild Cat. Well the barn was way down there -- quite a trip from
the house. So Grandpa was old and lame and he didn’t see how he could get out
in that storm all the time. So most of the cows – I don’t know as any of them
had to be milked then. He pulled down a great lot of hay and, you know, they
could keep in the snow. And left them there to their own device. They didn’t go
in the barn at all for several days and that was it. Uncle Bernard was up at
Wesleyan University and he was very much worried about them. He wrote them a
letter, I don’t know whether I’ve got it in my old box or not, but it tells
about him leaving town at the university. Everything was closed. He went down
to the railway station and found the passengers sitting in the cold cars with
nothing to eat. They were marooned
there. The cars couldn’t get … the deep tracks and kind people went and got hot
coffee and sandwiches and walked along beside the train and they took it
through the windows, don’t you see? And that kept them a while. He was telling how that was what he saw.
PE: How many feet of snow did you have? ..
Who?: Well, I can’t tell now, I believe .. of course it was
so terribly drifting. I think there must have been six or seven feet of snow on a level
PE: How about
drifts?
It would have been drifting. It drifted right away. .. There was snow from Sunday noon until
Wednesday or Thursday. We never had
anything like that. We never had the amount of snow and as mother said, we never
had a snowstorm when it was so cold. Thirteen and usually a snowstorm is around
freezing. Ariound 30. ,,,
I can tell you more of those facts. Father and Mother walked
down slowly on Easter day, but…