THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD

1/12/1888 - New Ice Age or global warming or just the usual ... Mother Nature getting in a snit has always been a problem for the human race ... as evidenced by the events of 1/12/1888 that come to be known as "The Schoolchildren's Blizzard" (it is also called "The Schoolhouse Blizzard" or "The Children's Blizzard").

Seeking Shelter

In a time without radio, TV, or the Internet, with no weather satellites overhead, a huge Arctic cold front from Canada slams into warm moisture laden air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Plains of the United States gets a monster storm that creates deadly havoc throughout the region as temperatures drop in a matter of minutes from slightly above freezing to -20 (-40 in some spots ... Fahrenheit), snow falls, and high winds blow ... catching thousands unprepared for the severity of the weather (and depending on the location, the storm will rage for 12 to 18 hours) with visibility being at ZERO to only a few feet ... ice seals nostrils in minutes, eyelids freeze together, and people die from exposure only feet from safety that can't be seen.  No exact toll is never decided upon, but most historians go with a figure in which the storm causes over 230 deaths, many of them to children.  

Big Snow

Here are a few of the stories that come out of the disaster:

*After gale winds blow off a corner of the sod and tarpaper roof of the elementary school south of Ord, Nebraska, 19-year-old school teacher, Minnie Freeman, links her pupils together with twine, and walks the thirteen members (in some accounts, 17 children are rescued) of her class to the safety of her home (the youngest is 5) ... a half mile away (nearby, a farmer freezes to death attempting to walk the 150 feet from his barn to his home).

 

Song Of The Great Blizzard

Freeman

*In O'Neill, Nebraska, church bells toll and the mill sets off its whistle every minute for hours, to try and help guide people caught in the blizzard to safety (flipping things, another Nebraska teacher will sound her school bell all day and night to let the locals know their trapped children are still safe within the school).

*Determining that the school's fuel supply won't last the night, teacher Lois May Royce tries to lead her three students to her boarding house, 200 yards away ... but the group loses its way and the children, 9,9, and 6 years of age, all perish ... while Royce survives, but less her amputated, frostbitten feet.

*Teacher Emma Shattuck takes refuge in a haystack ... where she is discovered two days later, so badly frozen that both her legs are amputated ... and she eventually dies from the shock to her system.

*In Omaha, cigarmaker Ferdinand Eller, freezes to death within a block of his boardinghouse, and 8-year-old Wixell Beck perishes walking home from Walnut Hill School, a distance of a quarter mile.

Goodbye Walking

*Out hunting muskrat and beaver, Omaha Indians Charley Stabler and Rough Clouds, along with Stabler's dog, Bear Claws, take shelter beneath a tree and are soon entombed in snow and ice ... the next day Stabler wakes to find Rough Clouds dead, and Bear Claws missing ... unable to break out of the snow trap he is in, Stabler accepts his coming death ... until around noon on 1/15 when he hears digging sounds above him ... Bear Claws had broken loose, gone for help, and finding none, decided to dig out his master himself (crawling to a nearby farmhouse after freeing himself, Stabler and his dog both survive their ordeal).

*An intoxicated idiot loses both hands trying to walk the three miles to his house near Falls City, Nebraska ... and sues the saloon keeper $5,000 for causing him to get drunk and not realize the severity of the storm he was walking into (along with his hands, he loses his suit too).

Freezing!

*Mary Masek of Milligan, Nebraska walks two miles to the local school to find her two sons, finds the school deserted (her sons have already been taken to safety), turns back for home ... and dies huddled under a cottonwood tree only a short distance from a neighbor's farmhouse.

*Trying to reach home from school, two sisters die in an open field ... the body of the 8-year-old vainly wearing the wraps her 13-year-old sister had taken off herself to try and protect her younger sibling.

A National Story!

*Out with the family cows, an Antelope Valley, Nebraska girl is caught in the blizzard but survives following her daily routine ... she grabs the tail of the old cow that guides the herd home everyday ... and discovers it works in a storm too, the old cow gets itself, the girl, and the rest of its family back to the barn area with no fatalities or injuries.

*Theodore Peterson is saved because when the blizzard strikes, he turns loose the blind mare he uses transporting product from his mill ... and route memorized from years of daily walking, the mare leads him home through the whiteout without missing a step.

*Caught in his boxcar office, 20-year-old night telegraph operator Frank Carney reaches safety by digging down and crawling along the railroad tracks to the nearby depot, his face only inches away from the tracks, reaching out to the north every few steps so he doesn't go by the depot platform.

*Searching for his sons, his sons trying to reach home, using a fence and a line of trees as reference points, the Hagemeisters walk past each other in opposite directions, without ever knowing it (they all survive).

*In Great Plains, South Dakota, two men rescue the school's children by creating a rope chain between the school and the nearest house.

*Near Garvin, Minnesota, 25 people survive three cold days and nights on a snow stalled train.

*Found days later, their arms entwined in each others, James Baker of Chester, Minnesota loses his six children on their walk home from school.

Just some of the stories of a very bad day that will be remembered for years and years to come by those that survive the storm's wrath ... 1/12/1888!

Historical Marker

Blizzard