New England Storm of '38

As Irene's far-reaching wind and rain wash over New London this morning, we naturally think of the "New England" hurricane of 1938. (Storms were unnamed in those days.) That storm left an indelible, first-hand impression on one generation, and it echoed through the next, as stories of its massive destruction became a part of family and town lore.

At the Archives we hold a collection of photographs depicting the damage and the years-long cleanup that followed. The tangled mass of uprooted trees was gradually salvaged, the logs were stored in several local ponds until they could be sawn into lumber—over a million of board feet—and stumps were pulled by the thousands.

One of the many interesting stories to follow the 1938 hurricane was that of a women's lumber camp in 1942/43 on Turkey Pond, just outside Concord, New Hampshire. Check out They Sawed Up a Storm by Sarah Shea Smith to learn more.

And here are a few images from the New London area in 1938 and later.

Cottage at Elkins (September 1938)

Logging in winter.

Logs stored in Otter Pond.

Portable saw mill.

Stacked lumber, for sale.

A Rosetta Stone

Taylor's Memorandum of Weather

Sometimes one document unlocks another—a Rosetta Stone, of sorts. Recently we were reviewing a teacher’s journal from the summer of 1880. The journal entries showed the days of the week but not their calendar dates. Fortunately, she noted the weather on rainy days, creating a pattern (e.g. rain all day Friday, evening rain on Monday, rain all day on Wednesday). By itself, this would be meaningless, but with a daily history of local weather we might be able to place the journal entries on the 1880 calendar.

Among the unusual items in our collection is just such a set of local weather observations between 1876 and 1886. By matching rainfall patterns from the two sources, we could see that there was only one period of frequent rains during that summer, and we found that the first rainy day noted in the journal probably fell on Friday, July 2, 1880. Using that as a calibration point, all the other days in the journal slid into place.

But who would keep a decade’s worth of weather observations? In early September 1880, the unidentified observer mentions that he took “Abbie” into town for school. The Colby Academy catalog for 1880/81 lists a student named Abbie Frances Taylor. Lord’s History of New London identifies her as the daughter of John W. Taylor, by then a widower and owner of a cloth-dressing and wool-carding mill in the village of Otterville. Why he kept the weather observations in the first place we may never know, but his record has certainly proven useful today.

On a related note… The British National Archives is supporting an ambitious project to cull handwritten weather observations and other data from almost 1,000,000 pages of Royal Navy logbooks—adding them to a database of climatic and naval history. More interesting, perhaps, is the way volunteers from around the globe are providing the digitization workforce.

Check out www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/503.htm or www.oldweather.org for more about this project.

Sugaring Time

"Sap House" at Low Plain

Maybe next year... Here it looks like an early spring, with no snow on the ground at sugaring time. Taken on April 1, 1892, the Sap House was photographed at the end of a winter in which just 20.8 inches of snow fell at Dartmouth's Shattuck Observatory in Hanover—lowest on the record from 1866 through 1958.

The two men gathering sap are identified, perhaps tentatively, as Ellie Farwell and Jesse Melendy. Reo Ellsworth Farwell, born in Springfield (NH) in 1862, resided on the Penuel Everett farm at Low Plain, taught school several terms, and served as town clerk. In 1897, he moved to Lynn, Massachusetts. The younger Jesse Melendy, also a Low Plain resident, graduated from Colby Academy in 1897 and entered Brown University. Both are listed in Myra Lord's History of New London, New Hampshire (1899).

The photographer, William A. Farren, was settled as minister of New London's Baptist Church in 1889. He preached "truth without fear or favor" for the next decade, according to the History of New London. Reverend Farren brought a keen interest in photography and took images of the town throughout his tenure. The archives holds a collection of over fifty of his New London prints.

Right now there's well over a foot of snow on the ground, but today was the best yet for collecting sap—clear, cool, and sweet.