While sitting in my office, looking out the window at the snow covering my Kentucky landscape and feeling the below 15-degree temperature even through double panes of glass, I realize we are now on day 10 of this very un-Kentucky-like winter weather. Our snow usually comes and goes within three to four days. For the last few years, we have had little snow. This year is so different that it brought to my mind the winter of 1779/1780.
That year’s snow came early to Kentucky, and with it the extreme cold. The Louisa froze solid at Boonesborough and on Christmas Day in the year of our Lord 1778, we crossed the river and moved to our new homes on that land we now called Boone’s Station. All the Boone brothers and sisters joined us, including Squire. The heavy snows that winter made our existence miserable. We built and lived in a cluster of half-faced cabins. I shiver with a chill just remembering those three-walled cabins. We kept a fire burning at the front and used hides and such to keep out the snow and cold. Thinking back, we always called that season the Hard Winter. Cattle froze to death in the fields. Wild turkeys froze in the trees and fell to the ground. We could hardly move about the snow was so deep. Too deep to hunt, too deep to trap. Food, once again, became scarce. Many suffered from frostbite and illness. Yet, we survived. . . .
As the Revolutionary War continued that winter, Washington billeted his troops at Morristown. With over six feet of snow on the ground from over 25 snowstorms that hit the colonies that year, his troops suffered as much as they had at Valley Forge. From various historic documents, stories of starvation, freezing temperatures, and death have been read by historians, students, and lovers of our history.
Now, I’m not freezing. My cabin has all four walls, central heating, and a fireplace. I have only been outside once for any period since the first snow. I can say that walking on the ice-covered ground was treacherous. Walking on the crunchy snow (it’s frozen) supports the weight of my large dogs and barely shows where adults have tread is weird. I can imagine the hardships of 1779/80, but I am not suffering as Jemima, those soldiers, and most of the colonists did in 1780.
I can only tell their stories.