CHAPTER XXIV
DELAWARE COUNTY CLIMATE, TOGETHER WITH NOTICES OF REMARKABLE WEATHER
In 1633 it is recorded that De Vries was frozen up in Wyngaert’s Kill from January 17th to February 3d, and that he did not return to Swansdale until the 20th of February. The Dutch colonists “did not imagine that we had been frozen up in the river, as no pilot or astrologer could conceive that in the latitude from the thirty-eighth and a half to the thirty-ninth such rapid running rivers could freeze.” Governor Printz states in the early days of the colony, that the “winter is sometimes as sharp that I have never felt it more severe in the Northern parts of Sweden.”*
The winter of 1657 is the first record of intensely cold weather we find in the annals of this colony, for the Delaware River was frozen in one night so that a deer could run over it, which, the Indians stated, had not occurred within the memory of their oldest living person, nor was there any tradition of it ever happening before that time. On Jan. 14, 1660, William Beekman wrote, “We are bravely blockaded by frost, but we are not affraid of it, as we are, on the contrary, well provisioned.” And on the 25th of the same month he records, “Two days ago the ice broke up, so that we shall shortly have free water.”** The winter of 1681 was also remarkable for its severity, for on the 11th of December the river was closed in one night so that all navigation was interrupted, while the succeeding winter, that of 1682, was very mild, scarcely any ice forming, to be followed the next year with intense cold. In that year William Penn, in a letter to Lord North, says, “The weather often changeth without notice, and is constant almost in its inconstancy!” while a writer in 1684 says,*** “The air is generally clear and agreeable. The summer is longer and warmer, and the winter shorter and sometimes colder than in England.” The latter statement was certainly true of the winter of 1697-98, when the river was frozen so solidly that wagon-loads of hay were repeatedly dragged across the Delaware at Christiana.
The summer of 1699 was extremely warm, and the winter of 1704 was so cold that snow fell over a yard in depth, the deepest on record, and birds, deer, and other animals perished, unable to find sustenance. The winter of 1700 was very mild, while in February, 1714, flowers were seen in the woods near Philadelphia. The summer of 1724 was known as “the hot summer,” which certainly must have been true of 1730, when eight persons dropped dead in the streets of Philadelphia in one day; while the winter of that year was bitterly cold, and the summer of 1734 was so warm that many men in the harvest-fields died, and great numbers of birds were found dead, owing to the heat. In the winter of 1739-40, when the cold was so intense in Europe, snow fell to a depth of three feet; the tops of the fences were covered, and sleds passed over them in every direction on the hard crust. The Delaware was frozen over until the 15th of March.
The suffering among the exposed settlers in Lancaster County, then on the borders of civilization, was extreme, the Pennsylvania Gazette recording that they were compelled to subsist on the deer which had died, and it was no unusual event to find ten or twelve of those creatures lying within a comparatively short distance of a spring, while great numbers of squirrels and birds were frozen to death. The horses, cows, and other domestic animals exposed in the woods without shelter perished. In many instances the stags and does fed at the hay-ricks with the cattle and became domesticated.
On the 17th of March, 1760, the Gazette informs us, occurred “the greatest fall of snow ever known since the settlement.” The roads in every direction were closed. The majority of the members of the Assembly were unable to get to Philadelphia, the snow, it is recorded, being in some places seven feet deep. Dec. 31, 1764, the river was frozen over in a night, and in 1770 the river closed on December l8th, and remained so until Jan. 18, 1771.
Capt. John Heinricks, of the Hessian Yager Corps, in his letter from Philadelphia in the early part of the year 1778, states, in reference to our climate and seasons, “The cold in winter and the heat in summer is quite moderate, but the thunder-storms in summer and the damp reeking air in spring and autumn are unendurable. In summer mists fall and wet everything, and then in the afternoon there is a thunderstorm. And in winter, when the trees are frosted in the morning it rains in the afternoon. Such phenomena are common here.”(4*)
This officer of one of the crack regiments of the mercenary troops, in his comfortable quarters on the Schuylkill, might thus complacently write of the moderate cold of that winter, but the ill clad and ill fed Continental troops at Valley Forge, as they clustered about the camp-fires, record a different impression of the weather, although Capt. John Montressor, of the British army, states in his diary, under date of March 14, 1778, “Weather very warm for the season; Layloche and Gooseberry leaves starting,” while on the 17th of the same month he mentions, “Fine weather; frogs croaking in swamps, indicating spring.”(5*)
The summer of 1778 was intensely warm, while the winter of 1779-80 was bitterly cold, the Delaware remaining for three months closed. At Philadelphia an ox was roasted on the river, and the ground was frozen to the depth of five feet.
The strength of the ice can be imagined when we remember that that winter the British army crossed from New York to Paulus Hook, drawing their cannon and wagons as on the solid earth. The winter of 1784 was very cold, and on Feb. 6, 1788, the thermometer registered three degrees below zero. The midsummer of 1789 was very warm, but in August the weather was so cool that fires had to be lighted in houses for the comfort of the inmates. Jan. 2, 1790, the air and water were so warm that boys bathed in the river, while in the following winter the thermometer was five degrees below zero.
The winter of 1801-2 was milder than any which had preceded it since 1700, which it very much resembled, and Watson records that shad were in market on the 17th of February, 1802, while the early winter of 1805 was so mild that farmers plowed their land until within a few days of Christmas, but the new year ushered in intensely cold weather, while February of 1807 was extremely cold, extending even to the Southern Gulf States. On the 19th of February, 1810, the mercury at eight o’clock in the morning registered seven degrees below zero. The year 1816 is known as “the year without a summer,” and it was equally remarkable in that respect in Europe as on this continent. Frost and snow were common in every month of the year. June was the coldest ever known in this latitude. Snow fell in Vermont to the depth of ten inches; in Maine, seven; in Massachusetts and Central New York, three inches. Fruit and vegetation was scarce and did not fully mature.
On the 20th of July, 1824, a noticeable storm of rain and hail is recorded as having occurred at Chester. Jan. 19, 1827, the Delaware was frozen over at Chester, and up to that date that winter no snow had fallen, nor did it snow until some time after the river had closed. The winter of 1824 was so mild that on the 9th of February a shad was caught at Bombay Hook.
On Friday evening, Jan. 12, 1831, one of the most severe snow-falls on record in this vicinity occurred. The storm continued all of the next day. The result was that the mail and stages were much impeded for three days on the roads from Philadelphia to Wilmington, but the cross-roads leading westward from the river were blocked with snow nearly to the tops of the fences, and in that condition was almost every road in the county. On Monday, Jan. 15, 1831, court began in Chester, and the juries and witnesses found their way across the fields, a few on horseback, but mostly on foot. The president judge did not arrive, and on Wednesday the associate judges, who transacted some business, adjourned the court.(6*) During the winter of 1833-34 the river was closed, and Theodoric and Hamilton Porter drove a pair of horses in a sleigh from Chester to the navy-yard, Philadelphia, on the ice, and returned in the same manner. On May 7, 1846, the snow fell for two days, blocking up the roads so that access to Chester by the highways was interrupted for several days. Trains on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad could not run for two days because of the great drifts, and during that time no mail passed north or south over that road.
The year 1838, Dr. Smith records, “was remarkable on account of a great drought that prevailed throughout a large extent of country, embracing Delaware County. From about the 1st of July till nearly the 1st of October, no rain fell except a few very slight showers. The earth became parched and vegetation dried up. All the later crops failed, and, what added greatly to the injurious effects of the drought, myriads of grasshoppers made their appearance and voraciously devoured nearly every green blade of grass that had survived to the period of their advent. Even the blades and ears of Indian corn were greatly injured in many places. Cattle suffered much for want of pasture, and many persons were obliged to feed them on hay during the months of August and September, or upon corn cut from the field.”(7*)
The winter of 1855 was remarkable. Up to March 16th the weather was comparatively mild, but on that date the cold was so intense that the Delaware was closed, and many persons living in this neighborhood crossed over the river on foot and in sleighs. On the night of March 6, 1858, the Delaware was frozen solidly in one night, the preceding winter months having been so mild that no ice had formed until the middle of February. The steamer “Keystone State,” from Savannah, on the evening of March 5th, had to lay to at the pier at Chester, where she was compelled to discharge her cargo and transport it the remainder of the distance by rail.
On Sunday, Jan. 7, 1866, a cold wave visited Chester, increasing until by Monday morning the thermometer was ten degrees below zero, and nothing to compare to it had been known for thirty odd years. Even now it is recalled as the “cold Monday.”
On the 20th and 21st of March, 1868, the most violent snow-storm known in the neighborhood for a quarter of a century occurred. The trains on the railroad were delayed several hours, no mail reaching Chester on Saturday, March 21st, until after mid-day, while the roads throughout the county were impassable by reason of the drifts.
The winter of 1872-73 was cold, while that of 1873-74 was mild. But the following year, 1874-75, was intensely cold. On February 10th the river was solidly frozen, and many persons walked from Chester piers to the bar on the ice, and the day previous the thermometer stood at two degrees below zero. The winter of 1876-77 was mild, while that of 1880 was cold, and, taking the mean temperature, it is said to have been the coldest winter since 1856. The streams leading into the Delaware were frozen six inches in thickness, and the depth of snow estimated at one foot to sixteen inches on a level.
* Report for 1647, Penna. Mag. of Hist., vol. vii. p. 272.
** Penna. Archives, 2d series, vol. vii. pp. 619, 628.
*** Penna. Mag. of Hist., vol. vi. p. 312.
(4*) Penna. Mag. of Hist., vol. i. p. 41.
(5*) Ib., vol. vi. p. 197.
(6*) Hazard’s Register, vol. vii. p. 248.
(7*) History of Delaware County, p. 359.
Source: Page(s) 215-217, History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, by Henry Graham Ashmead, Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co. 1884
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