Oh, the weather outside is frightful, winter tales

By: 
Sandy Vasko

    It's coming, you know it is. Snow and cold weather are part of life in our neck of the woods.
    Today we tell some winter tales to make us glad to be snuggled down reading the paper on a cold night.
    All these stories come from George Woodruff's book “The History of Will County” written in 1878. Our first story concerns a man named Holder Sisson from Lockport.
    “In November 1832, after settling in Lockport, he went to Michigan where he had sold a drove of cattle ‘on time’ while living in the Wabash country, to try to make some collections; but the trip was a fruitless one, as well as one of privation both to him and his family at home, which at that time consisted of a wife and five little children.
    “The Winter set in, and he was detained long beyond the time he had intended remaining; his family was almost without provisions, or any of the necessaries of life. During his absence his wife had to go out and cut wood in the forest and carry it to the cabin to keep her children from freezing.
    “There were few neighbors, and they were at a distance; Indians were plenty, but mostly of the friendly Pottawatomie, and under these circumstances, the heroic woman endured the long absence of her husband ignorant of his fate, and hardly daring to hope for his return, owing to the severity with which the Winter had set in.”
    “His sufferings and perils were great, and a man of less courage and energy would have sunk beneath them. As he was returning from this fruitless trip, while crossing Mud Lake with his Indian pony, the ice gave way and pony and rider were submerged; the weather was piercing cold and the snow nearly two feet deep. It was night, and in his frozen clothes he rode on to his home, not knowing whether he would find his wife and children alive or dead.”
    “Upon his arrival, finding them all well and comfortable as could be expected under the circumstances, he sat down and wept like a child.”
    Not all winter tales are unpleasant. Styx McDonald writes of a party he attended held one cold winter's night in New Lenox in 1836.
    “Quilting parties, ‘kissing bees’ and miscellaneous gatherings of young and old were common. How, at those little parties and throughout the long Winter night kept up the fun, untrammeled by society rules or modern etiquette.
    “Styx, describes a ‘kissing-bee’ he attended there in the good old days of the long ago. With such interesting and innocent little plays as ‘Old Sister Phoebe’, ‘Green Grow the Willow Tree’, ‘Johnny Brown’ and all others of like character, laid down in the programme, the night waned, and as the first faint streaks of dawn began to gild the eastern horizon, they decided to wind up the affair with one grand kiss all around.
    “The girls were placed in line, and the boys were each to begin at the head of the line and kiss all the girls. As the business proceeded, one little dark-eyed lass, who stood at the foot of the line, exclaimed, impatiently, "Why don't you kiss at both ends of the line, and get through quicker."
    This remark brought the performance to a close rather abruptly, by someone remarking at the moment, that it was broad daylight and time to be off home."
    Another story from the deep snow year of 1836, “A sad story was told us by Mrs. Stevens, who, though but a little girl of 15 or 16 years of age at the time, remembers the occurrence distinctly. It was of a family who had settled near the present village of Blue Island, and during this deep snow their store of provisions became exhausted, and the husband and father started for the settlements to procure fresh supplies. Being unavoidably detained by the snow, the last crumb disappeared, and the mother, in the very face of starvation, started for Chicago, as is supposed, to get food for her children, and got lost on the prairie and was either frozen to death or killed by wolves.
    “The former supposition is probably the correct one, and after freezing was devoured by wolves, as nothing was ever found but her bones, which were recognized by her shoes. Her children were discovered by some chance passer-by when almost starved to death, and were taken and cared for
by the few kind-hearted people in the country at the time.”
    And lastly a tale closer to home, “During the winter of 1854-55, occurred a great snowstorm, which is, no doubt, yet remembered by many. The train which left Joliet at noon on the 25th day of January, with 350 passengers, 22 of whom were members of the Illinois Legislature, was brought to a full stop when near Dwight.
    “The weather had grown cold and the engines had frozen up, and they were utterly unable to proceed. They were held in this condition for six days and nights, during which it was excessively cold, and there was much discomfort, to use no stronger expression.
    “It was several miles to timber, and the stock of fuel carried by the train was soon exhausted. The seats of the cars and also the second-class cars were cut up for fuel. They had no provisions the first day excepting a few cans of oysters and a few boxes of crackers, which were in the freight car.
    “Relief, to some extent, was brought in sleighs from the surrounding farmhouses and the nearest villages; and on the seventh day, an engine from Joliet succeeded in forcing its way through and bringing the shipwrecked train back to Joliet.”
 

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