The Year Without Summer (13 page)

Pennsylvania in 1816 was at the apex of its “golden age” of agriculture, in the midst
of the transition between subsistence and commercial farming. Farmers who formerly
planted a variety of crops to keep their families fed now focused upon one primary
product to sell at market. Wheat remained the most common crop in most parts of the
state, although farmers on the western side of the Appalachians preferred to raise
corn (up to twenty-five bushels per acre), since it could be distilled into whiskey
and shipped far more cheaply in liquid form across the mountains to eastern markets.
Corn also was grown for family consumption, of course, and to provide feed for livestock.

With European grain production disarranged by the Napoleonic Wars, U.S. exports of
both wheat and corn boomed as prices soared in the first decade of the nineteenth
century. The growth of Pennsylvania’s towns and cities provided an expanding domestic
market, and advances in agricultural machinery helped alleviate the state’s chronic
shortage of farm labor. Although Pennsylvania farmers were notoriously reluctant to
adopt new techniques, wealthy “gentlemen farmers” in the east pioneered new techniques
that increased yields per acre, such as planting red clover as a cover crop, and spreading
lime and gypsum to reduce soil acidity.

Farmers could supplement their incomes if they were fortunate enough to discover a
seam of coal on their property. Often the coal lay just under the surface of the soil,
uncovered the first time a plough cut through the earth. Typically a farmer would
mine the coal himself whenever he could spare the time from other chores, although
the lack of machinery prevented him from digging past the level where water flooded
the mine. In western Pennsylvania, where coal seemed to be everywhere, it sold for
six cents a bushel in the spring of 1816; local residents preferred to use it instead
of wood for fuel, “the blaze being so brilliant as to supersede the use of candles,
even for sewing.”

Farms located near substantial deposits of iron (most often in central Pennsylvania)
earned additional profits from selling wood to the ironmongers—who needed it for charcoal
to smelt iron—or simply by leasing their woods to the iron manufacturers, who cut
and transported the timber themselves and then returned the cleared land to the farmer.
Since larger furnaces employed upwards of one hundred workers, they required a wide
range of support services (food, supplies, and building materials for the walls, desks,
and benches of schoolhouses) that farm families willingly provided.

Livestock, especially sheep, represented yet another opportunity for Pennsylvania
farmers to augment their income, and in the summer of 1816 a speculative bubble in
Merino sheep was about to burst. A fine-wool breed native to the Iberian peninsula,
Merino sheep first appeared in quantity in the United States in 1810, after Napoléon’s
conquest of Spain loosened restrictions on their sale. A frenzied pursuit of the aristocratic
Merinos ensued, as Americans frantically bid up the price of breeding stock. Merino
wool tripled in value in two years; in eastern Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, “full-blooded
Merinos sold as high as $300 to $500 each and in a few instances they brought $1,000.…
A man in this county sold his wheat crop, 200 bushels, at $3.00 a bushel and gave
the whole of it for one sheep.” Prices peaked in the early months of 1816; by June
they had begun to weaken.

Prices of the imported goods that farmers purchased remained high, however. Cut off
from regular sources of supply during the war against Britain, Pennsylvanians found
themselves paying thirty-three cents per pound for sugar, and forty cents for a pound
of coffee. (Some enterprising consumers substituted rye for coffee, and drank the
brew unsweetened.) The prices of cotton and woolen goods also had skyrocketed at a
time when many farm families who used to make all their own clothes—as well as their
shoes, saddles, cabinets, and just about anything else they needed—were beginning
to spend more time raising crops for market and less on household crafts.

Pennsylvanians were as likely as any other Americans to see God’s hand in the June
cold wave, although the expression of organized religion had been dampened by the
effects of Enlightenment philosophy and the rationalism of the French Revolution.
Moreover, several religious denominations had suffered setbacks during and immediately
after the Revolution: Quakers whose pacifism led them to remain neutral in the struggle
for independence often lost the respect and trust of their patriot neighbors, and
never quite regained it; Anglicans—with the King of England at the head of their church—found
themselves under attack by mobs and the courts during the revolutionary struggle;
and Presbyterians, who overwhelmingly supported the rebel cause, lost both clergy
(who served as chaplains) and members of their congregations to the military effort.
But by the start of 1816, religious enthusiasm was making a comeback in western Pennsylvania,
and the events of the summer would provide considerable momentum.

Pennsylvanians—and particularly the Pennsylvania Dutch—took a backseat to no one in
ascribing spiritual or supernatural (the line often blurred) causes to natural phenomena.
For the ordinary farmer who needed to feel at least minimal control over the fate
of his crops and livestock, superstitions governed every aspect of farming. The movement
of the moon, planets, and stars provided a blueprint for success, even among well-educated
Pennsylvanians. “Gather apples on the day of the moon,” recommended one farm journal;
sow grain only when the moon was waxing; plant potatoes only in the “dark of the moon”;
slaughter cattle during a full moon. Signs of the zodiac carried nearly as much weight
as the moon, especially among German-American farmers who relied heavily on an almanac-like
publication known as the
Kalender-Aberglaube
.

Almanacs were nearly as ubiquitous as Bibles in Pennsylvanian farm households in the
early nineteenth century. Besides providing practical wisdom on agricultural and personal
matters, they served as farmers’ only source of weather forecasts authored by humans.
(Certain animals were also afforded the power to predict the weather. If a rooster
crowed after 10
P.M.
, or if mice or rats scurried about more noisily than usual, it would rain the following
day; or if a groundhog saw its shadow on February 2, there would be six more weeks
of winter. Even donkeys got into the act: “Hark! I heard the asses bray,” ran one
piece of prognosticative verse, “I think we’ll have some rain today.”) Almanac writers
typically took credit for making a correct prediction, though they deferred the blame
if nature proved them wrong. A farmer in southeastern Pennsylvania who embarked upon
a lengthy journey based on his almanac’s forecast of fair weather found himself forced
to stop short of his destination due to heavy rains. When he complained, the almanac’s
author replied that “although I made the almanac, the Lord Almighty made the weather.”

And that included the cold wave that swept over Pennsylvania on June 7. Those days
of subfreezing temperatures seemed especially ominous to those farmers who, encouraged
by wartime’s high prices for grain and corn during the war, had ignored the warnings
of their cautious neighbors and purchased additional acreage and machinery, often
with borrowed funds.

Based upon David Thomas’s observations, farmers in western Pennsylvania already were
walking a thin line between prosperity and disaster. “Agriculture is at its lowest
ebb, both in theory and practice,” Thomas wrote in his journal as he traveled through
the region in the first week of June, “and we have never seen its operations so miserably
conducted throughout the same extent of country.” He passed scores of small farms
that had been deserted, their solitary buildings (or their burnt remains) deteriorating
in the saddening countryside. The emaciated appearance of pigs and dogs on the local
farms—a sight which Thomas felt was “truly indicative of habitual scarcity”—confirmed
his negative impressions. Thomas blamed the poverty of the region on ignorance, rather
than laziness. Western Pennsylvania farmers appeared unaware of the benefits of planting
clover or scattering stable manure or gypsum, and they often plowed only a few inches
below the surface of the soil, preventing roots from gaining a firm hold. When cold
weather struck on June 7, moisture on the surface froze and expanded, dislodging their
plants.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, impressed Thomas with its vitality and industry. Already
known as the “Birmingham of America” for its manufacturing capabilities, Pittsburgh
was not a lovely city—there were still many ramshackle wooden buildings scattered
among the brick structures, and few of its streets were paved, so that rain turned
the roads into dark, heavy mud. And the residents, according to Thomas, displayed
a disconcerting proclivity to employ profanity at every available opportunity. But
the city boasted a broad array of industrial enterprises: iron mills, nail factories,
paper mills, cotton and woolen factories, flour mills, and glass factories, powered
largely by steam and fueled by the coal mines surrounding the city. The burning coal
that drove the economy also fouled the air; day and night, thick black smoke filled
the atmosphere. “Often descending in whirls thro’ the streets,” Thomas noted, “it
tarnishes every object to which it has access.” Housewives who hung their clothes
outside to dry sometimes had to pull them down and wash them again before they dried.
But when the cold front struck Pittsburgh in June, the heat from the burning coal
helped save the fruit trees around the city. “The peach, the plumb [sic], the apple
and the cherry, abound on the branches,” Davis remarked with surprise, “though the
frosts have been very severe.”

*   *   *

C
OLD
rains pelted western Europe throughout June. A low-pressure system settled over northern
Germany and Denmark, pulling in frigid air from the north and northwest, and sea ice
still floated in the North Atlantic, off the coast of Iceland. From Lancashire in
northwestern England came reports that “the character of the present season has been
on the whole ungenial,” with temperatures averaging five degrees colder than the previous
year. “The atmosphere still seems as cold as in March or November,” observed the
Lancaster
Gazetteer
on June 8. “For above a week past, the weather here has been very cold for the season,
with high winds and rain.” Two days earlier, a storm had brought snow to the hills
of northern Lancashire, “a circumstance not within the recollection of the oldest
person living in that neighbourhood.” On June 9, the area received another “considerable
fall of snow.” Parts of Bavaria received sufficient snow on June 7 to cover the ground
for several days. Up and down the Italian peninsula, the cold damp weather threatened
the silk harvest.

Traveling from Belgium through northern France, Lady Caroline Capel (sister of the
Marquess of Anglesey, one of Wellington’s leading commanders at Waterloo) found herself
soaked from “the torrents of rain that have fallen every day.” “France is quite dreadfull,”
she informed her mother, Lady Uxbridge, “& the Incessant rain, or rather Water Spouts,
that fell during our whole journey till we entered this Country was really melancholy;
Not a day passed that three of the party were not drenched to the skin, so that we
are well off to have escaped without some real illness.”

As the downpours persisted, the Ultra-Royalist pursuit of radicals in France gathered
momentum, aided by clerics, prefects, and informants. Anyone who openly rejoiced in
the government’s difficulties was subject to arrest; some zealous reactionaries wished
to make simple possession of a tricolor banner evidence of treason. Academics were
not exempt from persecution. The Royal Academy of Sciences, recently reestablished
by Louis XVIII, purged from its ranks “all scientists, writers or artists whose names
recalled unpleasant memories of the Republic or the Empire,” and launched a program
designed to support the monarchy.

This was only the latest volley in the continuing battle between scientific research
and politics in France, to the detriment of meteorological studies. In late-eighteenth-century
Europe, Enlightenment scholars had proposed the systematic gathering of meteorological
observations, hoping to discover that weather variations were the result of “predictable
forms of behaviour.” The primary impetus for meteorological research at this time
came from the medical profession. The prevailing theory among physicians was that
disease was caused in large measure by the effects of the physical environment—climate,
living conditions, topography—on the human body. (When the French spoke of the “temperature”
of the air in the late eighteenth century, they usually referred not to the heat in
degrees, but to the “temperament” of the atmosphere—e.g., cold and wet, or warm and
dry—as if it had a constitution similar to that of humans.) In an attempt to improve
public health by correlating disease and the outbreak of epidemics with weather patterns,
the Société Royale de Médecine established a network of weather observation stations
across France in 1778. Throughout the 1780s, more than 150 provincial physicians compiled
a substantial quantity of climate data throughout France; unfortunately, officials
never managed to analyze the data before the Revolutionary authorities disbanded the
Société Royale, along with other institutions of the Ancien Régime, in 1793.

Few were gathering statistics in early June 1816 as weeks of incessant rain in Saxony
caused the Saale River to flood, threatening the inhabitants of Halle (the birthplace
of Georg Friedrich Händel), and inundating the surrounding countryside. “The only
object visible above water was our lofty bridge,” reported one resident from Halle.
“Many cattle have been drowned. The price of bread and other articles of subsistence
is rising among us in the same proportion as the number of poor is on the increase.”