Growing up in New England, I heard a number of my older relatives talk about the year, "eighteen hundred and froze to death." I thought it was a cute phrase but otherwise never paid much attention. It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned that there really was such a year: 1816. In fact, none of the relatives who had mentioned that year to me were even alive in 1816; none of them were born until many years later. They obviously had heard about it from their older relatives. Being at least five generations removed from 1816, I became curious: what was so severe about this year that it left a mental imprint so strong that stories would be handed down in my family for generations?
When I later became interested in genealogy, I found a number of my ancestors had moved to new homes in 1817, 1818, or 1819. As I dug deeper into various records, I began to read about towns in the northeastern U.S. that had been growing for some years; then the population dropped in the years immediately after 1816. For instance, Richford, Vermont, was nearly a ghost town after 1816, the remaining few residents barely surviving. Waterford, Vermont, had so few residents that no town meetings were held for several years after 1816. Unable to sell their land, many just up and left it.
Many historians cite 1816 as a primary motivation for the rapid settlement of what is now the American Midwest. Many New Englanders were wiped out by the year, and tens of thousands struck out for the richer soil and better growing conditions of the Upper Midwest.
In fact, it seems that one summer of cold weather may have been the cause of a major migration of many of our ancestors. The phrase that I always heard was "eighteen hundred and froze to death." However, I have since seen the same year referred to as "the year there was no summer," or the "poverty year."
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