Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1912 — WORST BLIZZARD EVER SEEN HERE [ARTICLE]

WORST BLIZZARD EVER SEEN HERE

Gams Wednesday and All Business at a Standstill. TRAINS OVER 12 HOURS LATE And Rural Mail Carriers Did Not Get In Until Next Day From Their Routes. —Snow Drifts Six Feet Deep. *T < * The worst blizzard ever recalled by the oldest . inhabitant struck Rensselaer and Jasper county early Wednesday morning and continued all day long, (reaching its worst perhaps at about noon, when it was almost impossible to see across the street. The snow fell in flurries and «with the wind blowing a gale it sifted in through every crack and crevice of business houses and dwellings and piled up in huge drifts that were six feet deep in miany places. Along the nofth side of Washington street the drifts we)re from four to five feet deep, and where it was shoveled off the sidewalks Thursday morning it was piled six or seven feet in depth. All the rural mail carriers went out in the morning, and but one got back until next day: Carrier Daugherty on Route 1 was the first in; Carriers Murray on Route 2 and Mlartindale on Route 4 did not get in until about noon Thursday, while J. Q. Alter on Route 3 did not get' in until yesterday afternoon. All got their horses down in drifts and had a terrible time* of it. Carrier Murray put up at George Culpa; Carrier Martindale at Alf Peters’, and Carrier Alter at Marion Freeland’s. The roads were so badly drifted in Newton tp. that Mr. Alter could not get in until yesterday. Children in the country schools staid all night in many instances at the nearest house, it being impossible for them to get home or their folks to get to them to bring them home. Trains on the Monon were many hours late. The snow was a trifle damp and packed in drifts that were hard to get through. Fortunately it was not very cold or many people who were out in the storm would have perished. No one ever recalls so fierce a storm of such long continuation, the nearest approach to it that he ever saw, J. H. Perkins, county clerk-elect, says, was in the winter of 1864. The mercury Thursday was above freezing where the sun’s rays struck and it thawed a very little during the day, but where the sun did not strike the big body of snow, probably a foot or more in depth if spread out, was not plhazed.