Thursday, April 4, 1926
BIG SNOW
Editor Times: Having read so many conflicting dates in your paper regarding the deep snow, I wish to say that December 16, 1890 is correct. Also, I would like to give you some of my personal experience and I believe you will agree with me, that even if a fellow should live to be as old as Methuselah, he should be able to remember that date. However, I still have my old books to prove it.
In the fall of 1890, my two brothers and I owned and operated a sawmill on Back Creek for Charles Williams and Robert Matheny. On December 15, we finished this set by sawing some lumber for R. Lee Gum and F. A. Doyle. On December 16, we took our mill up and moved to another set on the David Wade farm, one and a half miles up the creek. Snow began falling about nine or ten o’clock a.m., and by the time we had finished moving, it was about eight inches deep. We then went back to our shanty for the night, expecting to set the mill on the 17th but when we got up – to our surprise, the snow was up to our window and halfway up the door.
Now the question of getting home. We packed some provisions and started early for home. At 12 o’clock, we reached the home of Charles Williams at the foot of Back Creek Mountain, a distance of a mile and a half from the starting point. By the time we reached the top of the mountain it was nearly dark. We had covered a distance of three miles. We descended the mountain and by wading a creek most of the way, we reached the home of Morgan Loury at the foot of the mountain at eight p.m.
The next day at noon, December 18, we got as far as David Kincaid’s on Jacksons River and reached home by way of Bolar Springs at eight o’clock. We felt good over our eight-mile hike for two days.
D. M. Buzzard
Cochranville,
Pennsylvania
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Editor Times:
I have seen so much about the big snow in your paper, I thought I would give you the correct date. It sure commenced snowing December 15, 1890. I was living in Wetzel county at the time. We had some very large pumpkins that fall, and when I was hauling them in, I upset the wagon and spilled a load. One pumpkin rolled down the hill and into a sink hole. It was too large to try to get it out. I just chipped a hole in it and turned in an old sow and nine pigs. When the snow came, I would go every week or two to see about how they were getting along. When the snow went off in the spring, every hog came out hale and hearty. This ought to settle the big snow question.
If any of the readers of the Times want any of these pumpkin seeds, write to John McElroy, Wileysville, W. Va. He still keeps them for sale.
Yours, for democracy,
T. S. Dulaney,
Woodrow, W. Va.
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Editor Times;
In reply to your inquiry about a sapsucker at work on a tree, I will say that on Friday, March 26, at the sugar orchard at the Kee Rocks overlooking Marlinton, Earl Kee and myself observed for some time a yellow bellied sap sucker at work on a number of sugar trees.
Mr. Kee and myself have been working this sugar orchard this season. We have observed results of sapsucker’s work on trees. Sometimes he would bore his holes near the spile, and our attention would be especially called to his work in these instances, as it would look at first glance as though the spiles were leaking. When the paper came out last week asking about sapsuckers, Mr. Kee and myself took time off to look up the bird, and to observe him in his work.
We saw him pecking holes in the tree, and we also saw him visiting trees which he had tapped and take his toll of sap from them. When the bird would drill a hole, he worked after the manner of a woodpecker and his pounding on the tree was plain to be heard. He is just as able a picker as the woodpecker, and it would take no time for him to get through the bark into the sapwood. The bird’s movements in the trees were not unlike those of a grey squirrel, keeping the tree between himself and the observer. It takes two men to see him…
Homer E. McNeill
Buckeye, W. Va.
DEATHS
James A. Whiting died at his home in Ronceverte March 30, 1926. His age was 79 years. His body was taken to his old home in Pennsylvania for burial. Mr. Whiting will be remembered by many Pocahontas people. As a partner of Capt. E. A. Smith in the firm of Smith & Whiting, he was active in lumbering the white pine of the Greenbrier Valley.
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Mrs. J. K. Chittester, of Nottingham, died Wednesday March 31, 1926. Her age was 60 years. Her body was taken to her former home in Northwestern Pennsylvania for burial. Mrs. Chitester is survived by her husband and their five children, one of whom in Mrs. C. G. Roman, of Cheat Bridge.
