Blizzards early settlers endured

By the time you are reading this we have either had a spring blizzard or a dusting of snow but we have at least had a warning of what may occur. That warning gives us time to prepare, to remember to fill our cars with gas, bring our early planted pots into shelter, try to protect the newly born calves or test the snow blower one last (we hope) time before the peach trees start to blossom. We do, after all, live in Nebraska and our environment is always predictably unpredictable.

When the blizzard of 1888 hit our plains state, there was no warning. In fact, the day started out unseasonably warm and children were sent to their one room schools without heavy coats to protect them. In those days, schools were mostly insubstantial buildings with cursory heat, no running water or a cafeteria stocked with food. A privy served as the bathroom standing well away from the school.

On January 12, 1888, Minnie Freeman, 19 years old, was teaching in her little sod schoolhouse when what is called the “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” hit the plains. Minnie taught the Mira Valley school which was located south of Ord in Valley county. According to history, the blizzard hit so quickly and the winds so fiercely that the roof blew off the school house and Minnie, knowing that they could not survive by staying put, led her students through the storm to a farm house nearly 1 mile away. This she accomplished in a blinding blizzard and temperatures that dropped nearly 100 degrees in 24 hours. Her heroism is noted in poetry, song, and a mural located at the capitol building in Lincoln. Many people, including teachers and young students, were not that lucky and were found frozen to death when the storm abated.

That of course is just one way that mother nature endeavored to drive the settlers away from Nebraska. In the book, Pioneer Stories of Furnas County Nebraska, several of the essays speak of the mass migration of grasshoppers that descended on their crops and homes. Mrs. John Harmon tells of her adventure with Mrs. Pruit when she joined her for a wagon trip to sell butter in Beaver City: “We got as far as the Frank Nickel place when we looked up and saw a cloud in the Northwest. It wasn’t more than said and done when our horses stood dead still and wouldn’t go at all. It wasn’t a storm, but grasshoppers, and we had to turn around and go back. They ate the towels off the butter and so many got in the butter than Mrs. Pruit had to make soap out of it. I thought that they would eat our clothing before I got home. I never saw anything like it before. We got home all right and I went to gathering roasting ears. I gathered a sack full and carried it into the house. The next morning when I got up there was nothing but stubs sticking out of the ground. I also had a few nice cabbages and I thought I would save them. I went out and covered them up with old clothes, but the grasshoppers ate the cabbage and the clothes too!”

What a life our predecessors had! Would we march on through those types of adversity today? I think we are seeing examples of our stubborn will to be Nebraskans all the time. In Nebraska, it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

SWNGS has a variety of books on Nebraska history. Visit our library on Tuesdays or Thursdays from 1-4 PM at 110 West C, Suite M-3.