Monadnock Moment No. 132

Era 6: Development of the Industrial United States -
           1870 to 1900

The Winter of '88

The winter of 1888 must have been a difficult one for our ancestors. On February 3rd of that year The Cheshire Republican newspaper reported on what it called "the worst snowstorm in many years," with heavy snow and strong winds.

The storm began on Wednesday evening, January 25th, and raged throughout the day on Thursday the 26th. Travel came to a halt almost immediately and the temperature dropped to well below zero as soon as the snow stopped falling. Railroad plows could not cut through the drifts for two days and the Manchester and Keene line was blocked when two trains, one in Hancock and one in Harrisville, left the tracks.

Stagecoaches could not travel and the mail was delayed. The mail carrier from Marlow carried the mail on foot to Keene and back to Marlow, where it was 32 below zero. Schools were closed throughout the county. The Cheshire Republican correspondent at Munsonville reported the coldest morning in 30 years and 16 inches of ice on Granite Lake. When the roads were opened, they were often narrow passages between eight to ten foot high snowdrifts.

It took a week for things to get back to normal, and then another storm hit. The correspondent from one town reported hurricane-like winds and called this second storm worst than the first. As the residents of the county struggled with these two storms, little did they realize that the worst storm of the century, the infamous Blizzard of '88, would strike just one month later.