LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - JANUARY 8, 2023 by Lynne Belluscio For some people the storm of 2022 will be memorable. Lots of snow. Blizzard conditions. Seventy mile-perhour winds. Tragic stories. The Buffalo Bills flying into Rochester and having an escorted bus trip through LeRoy. Fortunately, for most people in LeRoy, the storm didn’t drop a lot of snow, but the bitter cold and winds will always be memorable and prevented a lot of people from being home with family. But there are many who remember the storms of 1966 and 1977 and 1985 – 2000 – 2001 – 2010. And there are a lot of storms that have been forgotten. There was the storm of 1895. One of my favorite photos is a picture of Lake Street (Top Right Photo) at the top of the hill taken on February 13, 1895. According to the Genesee Courier of February 15, 1895, the storm hit on Friday and was still going strong on Monday. It was the worst blizzard in twenty years. Trains were stalled and people had to weather it on the train or hike to the nearest farmhouse. By Monday, 200 men had arrived from Rochester to shovel out the trains. Over 100 men helped to clear the Erie crossing on Lake Street. And it was not just snow. There was chilling cold. The thermometer dipped to 14 degrees below zero and the Courier said that food in root cellars froze. On North Street and Lake Street, the drifts were as high as 15 feet. “Considerable amusement was created by those who tried to take Kodak pictures of the B.P. &R. engine as it was being forced through the snowbank.” The engine struck the drift and the snow flew in the air and struck the photographer and over he went. “The air was blue while spectators laughed.” Unfortunately, that photo hasn’t been found, but the Lake Street photo shows a man standing on a huge snowbank above a horse and sleigh. According to a newspaper article in 1939, Andrew Weinman, who owned the photo, said that the horse and cutter belonged to J.B. Gillette, who owned a hardware business in LeRoy. If you look carefully at the picture, you will notice that the thills (boards that connect the sleigh to an animal) on either side of the sleigh are shifted to the right. Many sleighs were equipped with a sliding pin that allowed the thills to be moved over so that the horse would be off center with the sleigh. This allowed the horse to walk in the ruts of the runners instead of walking in the high snow between the runners. Too much snow was a problem for traveling with a horse and sleigh. Anner Peck, a student at Ingham University, wrote in her diary in 1863, that on her way home, they had to “take to the fields” four times because the snow was too deep on the road. Imagine what it was like when people traveled with horse and sleigh. Although too much snow was a problem, too little snow was also a problem. Sleighs could not be pulled through dirt or mud. Snow-covered roads were much better for sleighs. Some communities had wooden horse-pulled snow rollers that packed the snow down. A photograph in the Historical Society collection which was included in a 1990 Pennysaver article shows Main Street taken on February 22, 1927, at 10am in the morning. A group of men with shovels stand in the middle of the street. Notes on the back of the photo mention that snow on the north side of Main Street had been trucked away and dumped on the west side of Wolcott Street and over the “river” bank. The snow in the center of the street was being trucked away when the picture was taken. Next, the banks on the south side were removed and “before night the street was free from snow.” This was a time when automobiles did not have snow tires, instead they had chains for their tires. And the chains were also used during mud season. This was also a time when most automobiles did not have heaters. In fact, the 1908 Cadillac in the collection of the LeRoy Historical Society, has a portable heater on the floor. As a side note, it was a woman, Margaret A. Wilcox, who patented the car heater. I am not sure when snowplows came to LeRoy. There is mention of a horsepulled sidewalk plow, but it will take a little more research to find out when there were plows mounted on dump trucks. There are V plows, blade plows, and wing plows. The trucks could be loaded with sand and salt to keep roads and streets passible for automobiles. Storekeepers and homeowners were responsible for keeping their sidewalks clear. It was a time when boys could make good money by shoveling sidewalks. And believe it or not, a woman, Lydia Fairweather, (yes that was her name) had one of the first patents for a snow shovel, in 1889. Robert Smith was granted a patent for a plastic snow shovel in 1939. I’ve just ordered Bernard Mergen’s book, “Snow in America.” Hope it arrives in time to read before the next snowstorm. Snow Storms – Margaret Wilcox and Lydia Fairweather
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