Section 51:  John Campbell; Childhood Snow

In the early part of this history I spoke of my old Grand Uncle, John Campbell, in a way that would lead one to suppose he was a very intemperate man and that for this reason he was under the necessity of selling his farm and removing to Stone Valley. I desire to correct this statement and do justice to one who is revered by his grand children and descendants as a good man. From many slight circumstances and facts that I have heard I do not think he was as thrifty a man as his brother-in-law, and I have no doubt he drank a good deal of liquor, but at that time drinking freely was common and unless to intoxication was not considered disreputable, and the old gentleman was a church member and a christian man, and not a suspicion of dishonesty or immorality ever attached to his name. And while he was a large man of powerful frame, he never used his great bodily strength to injure his fellow man, but was of a kindly, peaceable disposition and affectionate in his family.

In the year 1823 the spring opened early. We had a five acre meadow east of the far orchard on the old farm that had never been farmed. It was not wet or swampy and that spring it was to be plowed for corn. It had been cleared and mowed many years, and there was not a stump in it. Being a hard sod, the plow was started in it along about the first of April.

On the Saturday before Easter about dinner time it began to rain and soon turned into snow. By evening it was falling fast and the wind coming from the east and the ground well covered. Then next morning there was more than a foot of plumb snow and it was coming down in sheets with a steady current from the east.

Being a stout boy nearly ten years old, I went up to the barn at feeding time and I thought the proper thing for me to do was to look over into the sheep stable or shade, for it was open at one end. I saw the sheep crowded into the shade and standing close together. I was specially interested in a lamb that I claimed as my own property, but I could not see it, and so I got over into the sheep yard and there I found my infant sheep lying in the snow and the old stock tramping over it. I caught it and set it on its feet, but it could not stand and so I picked it up and carried it down to the house and my Mother assisted me to wrap it up in some warm old flannel and I laid it in the corner near the fire. I warmed milk several times that day and poured some of it down its throat, for it would not drink or hardly open its eyes. However, I nursed it carefully but after all about sundown the ungrateful little wretch died.

The snow continued to fall till along in the evening of that Easter Sunday. It was said to be two feet deep. On Monday morning the sun rose without a cloud in the sky. The wind had got around to the south and the air was balmy and warm. By evening the snow was all in slush and every little stream was over its banks. In a day or two the ground was bare and before the end of the week they were again plowing.

I have seen many spring snows since that but I never recollect so deep a snow so late in the season, though in the winter I have often seen deeper snow. 1838 and 9 and 1855 and 6 were severe winters with deep snows, and in 1843 the snow was abundant and the sleighing excellent on the first day of April, and the ice was in the Clarion till the 8th or 10th of that month. I went to Brookville in the sleigh on the first day of April that year. The deepest snow I recollect was about the beginning of the year 1839. It was about or nearly four feet and badly drifted in our valley, and now this sixth day of April, 1889, two weeks before Easter in the morning the snow was about 14 inches deep and fell rapidly from 9 o'clock of the evening of the 5th till this morning at 9 A. M., but has wasted fast and this evening is more than half gone. And it is just about sixty-six years since the big snow of 1823.

At the date of the first I was approaching my tenth year; and now I am just about as near my seventy-sixth year and yet it don't seem so very long between those dates, and I have quite a distinct recollection of the events of that early time. It is probable Easter came later in the month that year than this, for I think the apple trees were in blossom, or so nearly so that the fruit was killed and that we had an apple famine that year or at least they were scarce. Of the two large orchards we had at that time, all the trees but two or three were native fruit, but a good many bore good fruit -- while quite a number bore hard, knotty and sour apples only fit for sour cider and not very good for that, but we rarely missed having an abundance of apples. During all the time I lived at home I only recollect of one or two seasons when there was a scarcity. I think the trees had not as many enemies then as now -- I don't mind of hearing of borers in those days, but there was a white worm used to eat into the roots of the peach trees and we put wood ashes around them to protect the roots from vermine. Some years we had large crops of peaches, but they were never so certain a crop as the apples.