Description

New York Public Library [Published Date: 1948]. Single folded sheet, unbound, 4 pp. Reprinted from the Bulletin of the New York Public Library. A bibliography of references to the Cold Summer of 1816 and the westward migrations from New England of 1817. In acceptable conditional with moderate aging spotting along edges and light creasing to corners. Otherwise unmarked. [From introduction] The year 1816 in New England was long a favorite subject for old wives' tales. It is a fact that there were snow and ice somewhere in New England each month of that year, and the early months of 1817 also brought some intensely cold weather. The corn crop failed almost entirely, other crops were about half of normal, and a great deal of livestock froze, starved, or was butchered for want of fodder. This, coinciding with the hard times that came after the Second War with Great Britain started a fresh wave of migration from New England and northern New York to Ohio and Indiana. Some of the more remote and inhospitable New England hill towns were abandoned as a result. As will be seen from the present list scattered references to the weather of 1816 and the migrations of 1817 are very numerous. But oddly enough they had never been assembled in convenient form until I undertook a study for the purpose of writing a magazine article. The help of Sylvester Vigilante and Gerald McDonald and the resources of the Library made the project possible in the first place. It also owes a great deal to Clifford K. Shipton of the American Antiquarian Society, Miss Gertrude Hassler of the Western Reserve Historical Society, and Charles P. Everitt, the New York bookseller.