South Main Street Snow, Easter 1915

South Main Street looking southwestward from Nickerson Avenue (right) and Webster Street (left). The street is virtually impassable save for the street railway tracks.

Another View from Easter 1915

The intrepid photographer that ventured out to capture the scene of Center Street covered by snow on Easter Sunday (April 4), 1915, also took this photograph of Peirce Academy with the Central Baptist Church in the background. (Thatcher's Row is just out of the image to the left). The Middleborough Post Office now occupies the site of the Academy building which at the time housed the district court for Middleborough.

Easter Sunday, 1915

One of the more historically notable snowstorms in Middleborough's past was the blizzard of Easter Sunday 1915. Described by the Middleboro Gazette as one of the worst in years, the storm in early April dumped a considerable quantity of snow on the town leaving church-goers on April 4 to confront the remarkably un-spring-like scene in the photograph above. The view depicts Center Street taken from in front of what is now Santander Bank. Recognizable is the Glidden Building at the right of the view. Though little plowing has been done, the street railway has managed to clear its tracks and the owners of the T. W. Pierce hardware store (the building at the immediate right with the sign marked "SHOES") have shovelled the sidewalk in front of their building, now the site of Benny's. The image below shows nearly the same view without snow.

A Horse Founders in Snow, 1886

   Prior to the arrival of the automobile, the arrival of winter snow meant the substitution of sleighs for carriages and the replacement of wheels with runners, with runnered vehicles gliding easily on hard-packed snow. Deep snows however were another matter and were sometimes difficult for horses to negotiate. In certain circumstances the snow could be downright dangerous.  Following a storm in February 1883, the Middleboro Gazette recounted one story - part ghost tale, part animal rescue - that spoke to the dangers heavy snow could present horses.

   Two young men came over from East Taunton, in a sleigh, last Sunday, and left the team standing on Benton street, near Cornelius Murphy's residence. The horse became restive, and finally went off on his own account. It was between nine and ten o'clock that night, when John Driscoll's boys were going to bed., on looking from the window over the meadow between the house and the river they saw some dark object moving, and having read about a 'ghost on School street,' were affrighted, and called for the father. The father advised them to go to bed, and not watch the dogs any longer. But they protested, and said they knew it was not dogs, until finally Mr. Driscoll went out, with stout stick in hand, to drive off the dogs, when behold he found a horse lying upon his side in a snow-bank tangled up in the harness. He sent for help, and the horse and sleigh that belonged to the Taunton boys was rescued from a position in which the horse would have soon died. He ran through Lincoln avenue, and up by Mr. Churchill's residence, and over an embankment of five feet depth, overturning the wall, breaking the sleigh, and tearing off his skin in several places. The only wonder is that he was discovered at all.

Illustration:
Old Sturbridge Village Sleigh Rally by Marcy Reed, 2013 
http://www.centralmass.org/media-center/releases/old-fashioned-horse-drawn-sleigh-rally-old-sturbridge-village-feb-2

Source:
The Middleboro Gazette, "Middleboro", February 13, 1886, page 4.

Middleborough Public Library in Snow, 1957

Illustration:
Middleborough Public Library in snow, photograph by Clint Clark, 1957.

Middleborough Town Hall under Snow, 1920s

Drifts 10 Feet High, 1904

As is the case today, snowstorms a century ago had the ability to cripple the transportation network, bringing both street railways and steam railroads to a standstill.  One such storm in mid-December 1904 witnessed tall drifts that covered rail lines, temporarily disrupting service until plows could clear them.

Country About Middleboro Effectively Tied Up by the Snow and Roads Open Slowly.

MIDDLEBORO, Dec. 18 - The country about here is more effectively tied up, as a result of the northeast snow storm last night, than since the big November storm in 1898.

Snow more than a foot deep on the level has drifted as high as 10 feet and has completely blocked some of the outside roads.  It may be a couple of days before they are broken out.

For the third time in a week the electric roads have had to dig themselves out.  The tracks were banked high in some places by snow thrown from the tracks earlier, and today's snow was with difficulty got out of the way.

The Old Colony [street rail]road had its big rotary plow out in charge of Supt. J. H. Hayes, and made trips all night to and from the four corners to the car house at Lakeville.

Blinding snow swept across lake Assawampsett, carried by the high northeaster, and packed hard on the tracks along the lake shore for more than a mile.  In these big drifts the rotary was given all the work it was capable of to keep the way open.  A nose plow was run with it to scrape the snow which the rotary left on the tracks.

No effort was made till nearly nightfall today to run the passenger cars.

The East Taunton road was the first to get passenger cars through, that being shortly after 11 this morning.  Its plows encountered drifts nearly as high as a car in the section through North Lakeville.

Illustration:
Trolley with Plow, South Main Street, Middleborough, MA, photograph, early 20th century.

Source:
"Drifts 10 Feet High", Brockton Enterprise, December 18, 1904.

Winter Scene, Early 1900s

This photograph depicts the ruins of the shovel works at the Upper Factory, located along the Nemasket River at Wareham Street, and looks eastwards towards Barden Hill.  By the time the photograph was taken at the turn of the last century by Fred F. Churbuck of Middleborough, the site had become much overgrown, and the river was barely discernible as a narrow ribbon of icy water running through the brush.  A mid-winter dusting of snow, however, softened the image and undoubtedly prompted Churbuck to capture it for posterity.

"An Old Fashioned Winter", 1893

"Snow-Bound", engraving from The
Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf
Whittier (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and
Company, 1884).

The image depicts the Whittier Homestead
at Haverhill, MA, the setting for Whittier's
most famous poem.  James Russell Lowell
remarked of the poem that "it describes
scenes and manners which the rapid changes
of our national habits will soon have made as
remote from us as if they were foreign or
ancient."

Today, most of us believe that New England winters have grown milder, and only seldomly are we visited by storms leaving heavy amounts of snowfall.  We consider snow-filled winters a "thing of the past". 

Surprisingly, Middleborough residents over a century ago were no different, nostalgically viewing the snows experienced in their childhood as well as the winter pastoralism so beautifully evoked in Whittier's Snow-Bound (1866) as relics of a by-gone era. 

When large storms in late February, 1893, passed through southeastern Massachusetts, leaving in their wake nearly twenty-four inches of snow, a correspondent for one of the local newspapers was prompted to label the season "an old fashioned winter."

Two feet of snow on the level this week confirms the truth of the impression which lingers in the minds of the populace that this is an "old-fashioned" winter. The roads outside the village have been badly drifted in many places. The drifts were especially deep on Titicut and Blackstone streets [across the Taunton River in Bridgewater] and some of them could only be passed by hard shovelling.

While "hard shovelling" is certainly not an enviable task, heavy snow and snow-bound households are nonetheless welcome and nostalgic reminders of winters past.

Source:
Unidentified newspaper clipping, February 23, 1893, Collection of the Middleborough Historical Association

Snow-Bound Trolley, 1910

A severe winter storm in January, 1910, was responsible for temporarily disrupting the community's everyday activities. Here, a trolley car on the electric line to Onset is seen stalled midway up Barden Hill. At the left is the Caswell House which stands on the corner of Wareham and New Water Streets. A crew of men is busy clearing the tracks. Such crews were accustomed to keeping the street railways passable, but frequently winter storms forced the suspension of service on the electrics, and sometimes worse. In February, 1913, icing of the tracks caused the derailment of one of the Taunton and Buzzards Bay Street Railway Company's trolleys in Middleborough.

Center Street Snow Scene

Piles of plowed snow flanking the sides of Middleborough streets following this weekend's snowstorm call to mind past scenes of Center Street in winter. Here, one amateur photographer nearly three-quarters of a century ago captured the scene on Center Street from a window in the Savings Bank Building. While the number of automobiles is few, several pedestrians make their way along the sidewalk, undeterred from shopping by the heavy snow. Awnings have been unfurled to keep store entrances clear of snow, including those for Walk-Over Shoes, F. W. Woolworth's (in the building now occupied by Reedy's Archery), Stop & Shop, Jessie F. Morse's Rexall pharmacy, W. T. Grant, the First National and Whitman's department store. Those seeking to take a break from shopping could always rest for a moment or have a snack at the Park Cafe next to Woolworth's.