The Clio messenger. (Clio, Mich.) 1907-current, 1918-02-22
|. N. BEEMAN RECALLS
COLD NEW YEARS
] MERcuEh REGISTERED TWENTY
~ ONE BELOW IN CLIO
Event Occurred During Winter of 6566
Soon After Mr.. Beeman Entered
Business

l. M. Beeman remembers the famous
Cold New Years and remembers just
how cold it was. He also remembers
the other phenomenal but less famous
cold winters that occurred during the
fifty-two year period that elapsed
before old Boreas made the winter Of
1918 of such a character as to take
the records from all other winters that
had gone before. 1t isn't a matter of
recollection with Mr.. Beeman, alto
gether. He has kept records of the
weather that fortify his recollection
very accurately.
Mr.. Beeman came to Clio in 1858, the
settlement then consisting of four or
five humble dwellings. four or five shin
gle shacks and saw mill owned and
operated by Huyck & Critics. The
settlement was then known as Critics.
burg and there were possibly three hun
dred people living within an area of
half mile square where the village now
stands.
But to return to the Cold New Years:
MIR. Beeman had entered business but
a year or so before, his store being
located in small building where Glenn
Williams office now stands. BY the
way, the railroad had gone through in
1861 and the village was then known as
Pine lRun Station, its business enter
prises being limited to one general
store besides Mr.. Reeman's, drug
store, five saloons, barber shop, bowl
ing alley, hotel and saw mill. 1t was
twenty-on degrees below zero at eight
O'Clock on the morning of the Cold New
Year and the few loungers in Mr.. Bee
mans store were sitting around the
stove, talking about how doggone cold
it was and keeping the wood fire burn
ing briskly. Just about this time a
stranger entered the store and told Mr..
Beeman he had ten barrels of apples on
his sleigh, just outside, and that he
wanted to sell them. The merchant
was not very enthusiastic about buying,
as he figured that, while apples were
scarce and high, those on the sleigh
were probably frozen as hard as bull
let's. But the man persisted and 1t fin-
ally.happened that MIR. Beeman bought
the lot at $l.5O per barrel, estimating
that possibly there might be bushel of
good apples in each barrel. The barrels
were rolled into a hole in the ground
under the little store and remained
there a number of weeks. Then Mr..
Beeman got one of them up and opened
it, expecting to find large proportion
of the apples spoiled, and was surprised
to find every one of them sound and in
perfect condition. He sold the apples
at from So. 90 to So. so per bushel.
The high price of those apples brought
to Mr.. Beeman's recollection other high
prices that prevailed at about the same
period. He remembers cutting hay on
the Michtegay marsh in the fall of 1858
that sold where it was stacked on the
ground for 5000 per ton. The follow
ing spring E. E. Huyck's grandfather
sold hay in the stack for $40. 90 per ton.
That winter, the winter of '58-9, was
also severe winter, it being reported
that on one occasion in the month of
March it showed so hard that yearlings
eating around straw stacks were buried
in snow up to their backs.
Following the winter of '58-9. the
weather appeared to be about normal
until the winter of the Cold New Year,
in '65-6. Following this the winter
weather in this section was tolerable
until the winter of '75 6. There was
not a great deal of snow during this
winter, but it was very cold, the ground
freezing to depth of from four to
seven feet, the thermometer standing
at zero or below on fifty-one days.
Then Dame Nature seems to have
smoothed her ruffled front for long
tidhe, or ub until the present, when Sc
we're cold settled down tight about the
middle of December and has remained
with us, with very slight intermission,
until the present. Mr.. Beeman holds
this winter to be the most severe of his
experience covering a period of sixty
wears in this section, it having reached
!, its apex in the blizzard of Saturday,
}Jan. IL, when the wind blew a forty
mile gale for twenty straight hours,
with temperature of zero or below.
He says that knowing the past and
prophesying as to the cold we may ex-
pect for the balance of the winter, and
the floods that are likely to follow, /
think this winter the hardest in Pine
Run and Clio. within sixty years, and
will venture the assertion that 1t will be
recorded as the coldest winter ever
known in Michigan. Now let US con-