The terrible, unending winter (of 1780)

‘So much snow fell in a three-day period that it rose above the windows of the second story … I had never seen anything like it. To set up communications with my neighbors across the street I had a vaulted passage dug beneath the snow.” 

This could have been written by any number of modern-day Bostonians during this exceptionally snowy winter of our discontent, but it is actually a far older record of a winter, during the American Revolution, that was the harshest in recorded history. The writer was a ship captain whose vessel had been trapped by the ice of the Thames River in New London, Conn., in 1780. He was not able to saw through the ice and free his ship until the second week of May.

Arctic air masses and a succession of three nor’easters hammered the entire eastern seaboard that January with extraordinary effects. For a time, Long Island Sound froze solid and people crossed over to Norwalk on the ice. The entire Hudson River froze as well. A loyalist printer named Hugh Gaine in British-occupied New York recorded a relentless succession of extreme weather and hardship in his diary, as these entries illustrate:

“January 4th — The Snow continued very deep in the Streets. Some people froze to Death.

“January 7th — Extreme cold indeed, all Navigation being stopped, and some Perished in the ice.

“January 14th — Very Severe indeed. The People cross the River on the Ice.

“January 15th — Last Night the Rebels came over to Staten Island about 4,000 in number, but have done no Damage as yet. The Severity of the Weather prevents any succors being sent.

“January 19th — The Rivers all fast, and the people daily crossing on the ice. Rumors that General Washington means to attack us.

“January 20th — Provisions for 6 weeks sent to the Garrison at Powlis [sic] Hook on the Ice by Sleds, with a Reinforcement from the 42nd Regiment …

“February 6th — Eighty-six sleighs went this Day to Staten Island on the Ice, loaded with Provisions for the Army. This Afternoon the Weather more Moderate.

“February 7th – The Weather still very Severe, and not the Least Probability of a change. The Sleighs returned from the Island, the same way they came, accompanied by Simcoe Light Horse. Snow this day.”

That trip by sleigh to Staten Island was 10 miles across New York Bay each way. Even cannon were dragged across. The Continental Army raid referenced above involved a shorter crossing from Elizabeth, N.J., and faltered when it was discovered that the fortifications were protected by drifts 10 feet high — what one participant would later describe as “an abatis of snow.” 

Rhode Island subaltern Jeremiah Greenman was less prosaic in his diary. “Hear [sic] we dug the snow off the ground & built up Fires and tarried all Night and very cold with a Number of our men’s feet fros’d.”

It was no better for the Continental soldiers, starving and shivering in their winter encampments at Jockey Hollow near Morristown, N.J.

Lt. Col. Ebenezer Huntington of Connecticut wrote on Dec. 24, 1779, that “the severity of the weather hath been such that the men suffer’d much without shoes and stockings, and working half-leg deep in snow” to build themselves log huts for shelter. 

A Massachusetts surgeon named James Thatcher recorded,  “The sufferings of the poor soldiers can scarcely be described, while on duty they are unavoidably exposed to all the inclemency of storms and severe cold; at night they now have a bed of straw on the ground, and a single blanket to each man.”

Even at the end of March, loyalist Gaine was still remarking on the unseasonably cold weather in New York. On April 20 he noted that it was still very cold for the season and they were obliged to keep fires burning in their homes for warmth. On May 1 he wrote with evident resignation, “still disagreeable weather for the season as ever was known.”

This has been a hard winter by most measures, and I truly hope I will be able to turn the heat off in April. But if I don’t, I will consider that it could be worse. And back in 1780, it really was.

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at www.greensleeves.typepad.com.