I’ve been on hiatus since Christmas while attending to my wedding and my honeymoon. Having just returned from our celebratory Cruise, I can get back to regular posting…
The Great Blizzard of 1888 – Nyack’s A-drift
This year’s “Winter That Never Was” is the – pardon the pun – polar opposite of 1888, which brought the worst winter snow disaster the United States had ever seen. Beginning on March 11 and stretching through March 14, this monster storm would dump 50 inches of snow on Connecticut and Massachusetts and 40 inches on New York and New Jersey, with sustained winds of 45 miles an hour. Entire homes were literally drifted over; a drift in Gravesend, Brooklyn was measured at 52 feet high. Railroad lines were blocked taking days to clear; telegraph and telephony lines snapped or exploded isolating the metropolises of Montreal, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC for days. Electrical lines dropped all over New York City adding electrocution deaths to deaths from exposure and building collapse. Over 400 people would lose their lives on land – more than 200 in New York City alone – and 100 more lives would be lost at sea in coastal vessels sunk from wave battering or by the enormous weight of ice that formed on superstructures. This storm would prompt New York City to bury its electrical lines and its train stations and push harder for a subway.
In Nyack, snow accumulations were less than in Brooklyn though well into the two foot range, while drifts engulfed entire houses and blocked streets and docks. Nyack was isolated from the rest of the Metropolitan Area with both ferry service stopped and trains unable to get through the drift. Daily commuters who had left Nyack on the train that morning were unable to return for days (Fancy that, train service right from Nyack… hey Albany!! ).
The archives of the Erie Railroad show a report from Harry Lewis Sarvent engineman from Nyack and at that time foreman of the Nyack Engine Yard. (Sarvent is a descendent of Phillip Sarvent, mentioned in several of my blog posts as a hero of the British Attack on Nyack and is a possible candidate for the identity of the legendary ghost in the Old Palmer cemetery – see October 2010 posts). Harry Sarvent reports to his superiors that: “On March 12th, 1888, the time of the blizzard, I was called to ‘fire’ locomotive engine 327 for engineer Benjamin Scribner at 4:30 a.m., Monday, and left Nyack about 7:30 a.m. We got back to Nyack the following Thursday afternoon.” This for what was normally a one-hour or less return trip.
Many Nyackers and other Rockland Residents were trapped at various workplaces – several Macy’s Saleswomen from Nyack were permitted to sleep in the store for the duration, in – where else – the mattress department. Nyack’s pioneering woman physician Dr. Virginia Davies (yep, Dr. Davies Farm on 9W in Congers was hers) was in March of 1888 in the middle of her four-year stint as Head of the New York Infant Asylum and had arrived in the city quite early that day. Like so many others she became trapped at her workplace, fortunately for the infants and children there, for after over two full days of her snowy imprisonment she led a party who TUNNELED through 18 foots drifts to get milk since there had been no supplies that entire time. This act of heroism was braver than you might first think – the majority of deaths from the blizzard were those who had attempted to bludgeon their way or tunnel their way through enormous drifts – and women pedestrians had a significantly higher rate of mortality because their heavy petticoats dragged them down, and frequently prevented their desperate attempts to extricate themselves from their snowy entombment. An odd quirk of history shows that as a direct result, petticoats became far less massive and calf-length skirts made their first appearance in modern fashion.
Nyackers and City Folks had all adapted to “modern conveniences” such as electricity, gas stoves, telephones and easy access to fresh milk, groceries, heating fuel, transportation and newspapers. The papers published at least two additions a day back then, and people read them as avidly as we watch the news twice or more times a day in 2012. At first, just as would be likely today, people griped about not having anything to read, or being able to go to the theater, or not having their lights or telephone work. That was “at first”. As the isolation stretched to days and no supplies could get anywhere on the East Coast, lack of food and heat switched from frustrating to fatal. Urbanite and Villager alike were used to picking up fresh food daily (home refrigeration not being widespread) and having the coal man deliver regularly. Trapped in their homes and offices and shops and tenements and hotels, millions in the New York metro area were threatened with death from exposure or from hunger.
Many were forced to improvise, and that improvisation would result in one of the Nyack areas longest lived legends. On the border of Blauvelt and Nyack, near Buttermilk Falls a family on Greenbush Road living in one of the old Dutch Sandstone Colonials was literally trapped in their home by drifts as high as the roofline. The quickly ran out of firewood and could not get out their doors to get more – so they began to burn anything in the house that they could – newspapers, artwork, beds, tables, chairs, and finally only one thing was left. The family patriarch had passed away at an advanced age just prior to the blizzard and his coffin was in the parlour waiting for a now postponed funeral. With no other options, the family was forced to do the unthinkable — burn the old man’s coffin, and keep granddad’s body in deep freeze just outside the door. Apparently, the old man (or his shade) was not amused. By all accounts, no one has ever been able to satisfactorily heat that parlour since; and it remains chill even in the hottest dog days of August.