Winter Memories - Sleighing
Winter Memories -- Sleighing
As you sit beside the fireplace, stove, radiator or other heating element, and the weather outside is frightful, does your mind turn to previous winters, real and imagined.
Radio station WCRB played Jingle Bells, and the announcer noted that the Medford MA composer in 1857 intended it as a Thanksgiving song, not Christmas. Did snow start falling by Thanksgiving in North Hampton back then? I can remember only one snowy T-day in New York, when heavy wet snow caused me to ruin a pair of stylish shoes leaving my cousin’s house after a long day of feasting.
Jingle Bells also started me thinking about sleighing. I have a fur muff of my grandmother’s and I realized she probably used it on sleigh rides as a young woman, not automobile trips. The photo that accompanies this blog dates from about 1914. (It’s Susan Locke on Post Road near the cemetery).
Then there’s the mid- 19th century archival collection in Weymouth MA which included letters that spoke of sleigh rides. I was amazed at the distances the young men and women traveled north and west of Boston in an afternoon - certainly much faster than my commute through Boston to Weymouth.
I turned to Samuel A. Dow (1846-1933) and his beloved, Emily (Emma) Marston (1846-1912), to learn about sleighing around North Hampton. The two definitely rated winters by whether there was good sleighing.
He was pretty matter of fact about the weather. In 1863, there was snow from January 8th to April 7th. He seemed to have school, snowstorm or not. In 1876, there was little snow. In fact, on January 1st, it was “fair and very warm for this time of year, 76 above in sun.”
By the way, New Year’s Day apparently was not a holiday. Samuel went to Portsmouth to have two teeth extracted -- what a way to start the new year. Almost four inches of snow on January 23 was “the largest snowfall this winter so far.” A foot of snow on April 5th but it was “full of water and travelling very bad….sleighs are out today but hard sleighing.”
Emma seemed to love sleigh rides. Here are a few quotes from her, then 21 years old, almost two years before she and her “Sammie” marry.
Friday, January 17, 1868. “We have had a splendid day, real pleasant and nice sleighing. Mother, Mary George and myself went to Portsmouth today through Greenland. It was real good sleighing that way. Went over the Plains. Did not see any old friends. Got home around seven o’clock.”
Wednesday, January 29th. “Commenced snowing about noon. There is about eighteen inches of snow. Now it will be grand sleighing after it gets trodden.”
Wednesday, February 12th. “Beautiful today. Rather sharp this morning. Sammie and I have had a splendid sleighride today. Been down in Hampton to see his Aunt Akerman, stopped there to almost three o’clock. From there we went to see his Aunt Dorys at Little River and took tea. Went up to Mr. Batchelder’s in the evening and stayed all night. I had a first rate time all round. Went to bed around eleven and real pleasant this evening the moon just rising when I went to bed. Looked splendid.”
Moonlight on the snow in North Hampton one hundred fifty three years later still looks splendid but no horse-drawn sleigh traffic.