Monadnock Moment No. 131

Era 5: Civil War and Reconstruction - 1850 to 1877

"He Perished of Cold"

In 1864 Jonathan Whittier moved with his family into a sixty year old farmhouse in the southwest corner of Stoddard, New Hampshire. Jonathan worked the farm and renovated the old farmhouse. In the mid 1870s, as he approached sixty years of age, it is said that he worked the fields like a man half his age.

On December 29, 1876, Jonathan walked to the post office in Munsonville, some three miles distant, to pick up the family's mail. Snow began to fall as he made his journey. He picked up his mail and started toward home. The storm changed to a blizzard and the snow piled up fast and deep. Jonathan Whittier never returned home to his farm that evening.

When the weather cleared, Jonathan's family began searching for him. They found that he had started home from the post office, but they could find no trace of him anywhere in the neighborhood. For three months the family waited, with no word of their husband and father.

On March 25, 1877, as the winter snows began to melt, Jonathan's body was found by the roadside, not far from his home. His gravestone in the Munsonville Cemetery recounts the tale of his tragic death. It reads: