St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1898-02-25

DTus, anu pa tiSu'o' SSS''Ps'O ~
each appearance of the Aurora Bor-
calls.
David ! )hnson was son OF Col.
Thomas Johnson of Revolutionary
fame, himself the father Of talented
children, who spent his entire life OF
eighty.seven years, practically within
few rods OF his birthplace, where he
died in 1865. He lived on the Ok
bow, in Newbury and was a mer-
chant, farmer, land owner, and town
clerk twenty years. The book is not
less a record OF the weather, than OF
the singularly accurate, painstaking
character OF the man. Very few men
would possess such observing pow
ers or the patience to record what he
saw. If he was away from home it
was the duty of some member OF his
family to make the observa tions, and
at the end OF the year its weather
record was summed up and the bal
ance struck with as much care as he
gave to the public and private bust
ness on his hands.
Toward the end Of his life his OBJ
servations began to attract the at
tention of scientific men, and, by
request, he prepared an abstract OF
his notes of forty years for the Smith
sonian Institute.
He concluded with these words:
For the absence OF scientific accur-
acy in these crude sketches, the
writer may be allowed to plead in
excuse that that they are made by
an unlettered old man in his seventy
ninth year, but who is blessed with
eyesight to read and write without
the aid of spectacles."
Bound up in the same volume is a
small manuscript book OF eleven
pages, which possesses unique inter-
est. 1t contains the notes of un-
usual conditions of the weather
from 1773 to 1895. by Col. Thomas
Johnson. Icopy very few of them:
I'm the year 1773 the wheat was
headed out on the 10th Of June, and
that Night there was an uncommon
great Frost which killed a consider
able part of the Indian Corn. so that
it never grew again, and in the Night
OF the 18th there fell two inches of
SNOW"
The year of 1888 seems to have
been variable one, as heavy rain
set in the 18th OF February and
lasted three days and nights, making
a great freshet, and before the river
had fallen there came period Of in
tense cold. March 10. This was
one of the coolest days that ever
knew"
A few days later came warm
weather with thunder showers. The
river broke up the 30th. and apple
trees were in bloom the 25th of April.
On May 18th of the same year came
"the heaviest shower | ever saw"
and the Connecticut river rose six.
teen feet in one night.
The 9th of August was the coolest
day known at that season in New
England for rs years, and a frost
killed all the corn not protected by
fog. On the 10Th OF September rain
set in and lasted, with scarcely fair
day till the 19th OF October, when
the weather cleared with a snow
storm which was from three inches
deep in the valleys to nearly two feet
on the hills. The following winter
was unusually severe.
On April 20, 1885. he says: "Tbis
day l went into the oxbow, and the
snow was so deep that | could not
ride in the road. In some places the
drifts were three feet deep"
In 1856, snow did not thaw in the
sun from November Ia to D cember
g. and the summer of 1887 was
very cold and little corn ripened.
In 1889 cattle were not turned out
to pasture until the 21st of May,
and grass had started but little.
In 1895 people plowed till after
New Years, and the river did not
freeze over until tie 18th of January.
The year 1894 was the iairest
weather and the most fruitful year
he had known in Newbury.
From these and other records it
would appear that extremes Of
weather were more frequent a cen
fury and more ago than now. Few
are lett who can, like Mr.. Ide, stretch
their memories to the cold summer
of 1916 The great snow storm in
Mavv (10Q1\ ;s tho limit wi n ,,,oct