Next, the worst winter of the 18th century.

Discover the chilling story of terrible snow and ice on the dangerous road to revolution.

The winter of 79-80 was probably the worst winter of the 18th century.

We find out about the colonists caught in a little ice age.

And how a January blizzard left Morristown and American independence buried in four feet of snow.

"Drive by History" starts now.

[music] Made possible by the Preserve New Jersey Historic Preservation Fund.

Administered by the New Jersey Historic Trust, State of New Jersey.

Also, the New Jersey Historical Commission.

Enriching the lives of the public by preserving the historical record and advancing interest in and awareness of New Jersey's past.

[Music] And the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

We explore, cultivate, and champion the public humanities in order to strengthen New Jersey's diverse community.

Every day thousands of motorists pass by countless history markers and say to themselves, "One of these days I'm going to stop and read that.

One of these days I'm going to find out what happened and why it mattered."

Well, this is that day.

I'm heading to a history marker that involves winter weather.

Now personally, I love a snow day, who doesn't?

But at the time of the American Revolution, I'm not sure how many of us would have felt that way.

I'm Ken Magos and this is Drive-By History.

(upbeat music) Today's investigation, part of our special series focused on the American Revolution, begins in Morristown National Historic Park in Morristown, New Jersey.

Located about an hour west of New York City and two hours north of Philadelphia, the Continental Army spent a considerable amount of time in Morristown.

And I have no doubt much of that time was spent by the fire.

Here's the history marker.

It says, "A revolutionary winter, Morristown National Historical Park commemorates the suffering of the Continental Army during the terrible winter encampment of 1779 to 1780.

The main part of Washington's army camped in Jockey Hollow during that winter.

There were no smiling fields and shady trails, just snow and cold.

Bitter cold.

It was the coldest winter of the war.

The intersection of weather and history is a relatively new area of scholarship, and I find it fascinating.

I'm off to find out more.

Historians call the Morristown winter the crucible of endurance.

That's the same name used by the Marines today for their incredibly demanding endurance trials, which test physical, mental, and moral strength.

It's not a coincidence.

And that takes me to the Guggenheim Library, housed in this mansion, the former home of Murray and Leonie Guggenheim, located on the campus of Monmouth University, where drive-by histories Anthony Bernard is blanketed in research.

Hey, Anthony, how you doing?

I'm Ken.

What's going on?

Good to see you.

Good to see you, too.

Listen, I just came from a history marker that talks about Jockey Hollow in the winter of 1779-1780 as the coldest of the war.

Now, that surprised me because I would have thought it was Valley Forge.

What can you tell me?

I can tell you that if you're looking for a local history that fits perfectly into the national narrative, you've definitely found it here.

That's what I like to hear.

So Valley Forge is remembered for its harsh conditions.

The winter of 79-80 at Jockey Hollow was actually worse.

Yes, but we'll get to the details in a little bit.

First, I want us thinking about the seasonality of war at that time.

That makes sense.

It's an angle I hadn't really thought about before, but I am really anxious to learn more about that.

In the 18th century, armies effectively stopped fighting in the winter.

They basically just hunkered down where they were and rode out the season.

So not just during the Revolution.

What you're saying then is that there were almost no winter battles that took place during this era.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, think of it.

It's the 18th century and you're trying to move troops, horses and wagons through snow, mud and ice.

Crazy nightmare.

Impossible.

The logistics must have been incredible.

And there are no roads.

There's no easy way from one point to another.

And another thing to keep in mind is that the freezing temperatures ruined gunpowder.

Well, he definitely didn't want that.

No, not for an army.

So what did the soldiers do then?

Well, they trained, they repaired equipment, and they basically just waited out the season until spring.

But the Battle of Trenton was famously launched in the winter of 1776.

Ah, can't get anything past you.

You're right.

Every rule has an exception.

Washington struck at Trenton in the winter, surprising his enemy, who probably thought that combat had taken a hiatus for the season.

You know, it's interesting.

We think of the Hessians as being drunk and unprepared, but maybe there's more to that story.

Maybe at the time it was common to take a little rest at that time.

Precisely.

Washington's winter campaigns stand out precisely for that reason, because they defied the military norm of the 18th century.

So what you're saying is that during the Revolution, for the most part, war wasn't waged during the coldest months of the year.

Exactly right.

It was fought against another opponent, one who took no prisoners.

Old Man Winter.

Yep.

That's where the next leg of this investigation begins.

To find out more, Anthony arranges for me to return to Morristown National Historic Park, where I'm met by Blake McGrady, a student of 18th century history.

His PhD from the Graduate Center at CUNY takes a deep dive into the environmental legacy of the American Revolution.

As we said earlier, the role of weather is a newer area of scholarship, and Blake McGrady is leading the way in research efforts.

We begin the conversation not at the time of the American Revolution, rather we start 300 years prior at the start of another era, a period that today we call the Little Ice Age.

The Little Ice Age was a period of climate change that affected people around the globe from the 14th century to about the mid-19th century.

Okay.

Looking at the natural history for a moment, scientists believe powerful volcanic eruptions around the year 1300 set particles into the atmosphere which affected the delicate balance of nature.

As a result, a series of events took place, such as changing ocean patterns that led to sustained cooling.

The colder conditions lasted for centuries, well after the volcanic dust cleared.

On average, temperatures in the northern hemisphere dropped about 2 degrees Celsius.

2 degrees Celsius is about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

That doesn't sound like much.

You probably wouldn't notice a small change like that yourself.

But the Earth noticed.

With the temperature drop upending the planet, the impact affected people all over the globe, particularly those in North America.

This meant they were living lives with shorter growing seasons, longer droughts, more volatile weather, more severe, infrequent, natural disasters.

Now, not every winter was brutal and snowy, nor was every season riddled with calamity.

However, as we focus on the time of the American Revolution, specifically the Morristown encampment, we find the Little Ice Age in full swing, with Mother Nature unleashing her fury with abandon.

- The winter of 17980, when the Continental Army was here at Jockey Hollow, was the worst winter of the Revolutionary War, probably the worst winter of the 18th century.

During that winter, the temperatures dropped early, snow fell early, probably snow falling in November.

- You've probably experienced something similar in your lifetime, but as we said earlier, today, you know bad weather is coming.

At the time of the Revolution, you didn't.

If you were trying to anticipate a storm, you would have turned to an almanac, hoping for some guidance, all the while knowing it might not be particularly accurate.

Early Americans did not take almanacs as gospel.

Okay.

They were an important tool and you would find them probably in every household around rural New Jersey.

They're dirt cheap that allowed people to access them.

However, they were not used exclusively to predict the weather.

They had to rely on environmental knowledge, right?

They might also mark up almanacs, when almanacs got things correct, when they got things wrong.

Sometimes you see in almanacs, in fact, people recording the appearance of certain animals, bird species who might be appearing, or as we know today, migrating, or when insects start to sound, or when frogs start to sound in ponds.

(frogs croaking) - Attempts to anticipate weather patterns bordered on the fantastic.

And it's understandable, storms were a source of trepidation and dread.

People were often blindsided by them.

(dramatic music) - You might wake up in the morning and find that there's been a foot or two of snow dumped on you.

- So that sort of living with chance and unpredictability in terms of the weather is just a regular part of daily life for people in the 18th century that I had to learn to cope with.

- People must have felt anxious and apprehensive for the entire winter of '79-'80.

They had to have been on edge just wondering what the next day would bring.

It was a difficult time, and it was difficult all over the colonies.

But this was also an event that was experienced across the continent.

The ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia are all shut up in ice.

Mills stop running, so you can't saw timber, you can't produce paper.

That's the little ice age.

And that's the backdrop for the Continental Army as the soldiers converged on Morristown.

This winter was marked by repetitive heavy snowfall.

So drifts getting up to maybe five feet high, consistent cold temperatures hovering at or near zero.

Those are things that happened during this winter.

It was a natural disaster and certainly the worst winter of the Revolutionary War.

I want to pause and emphasize that point.

It was so cold and snowy and icy, historians view the winter of the Morristown encampment as a period of natural disaster.

I came to Jockey Hollow in December because I wanted to experience how cold it is.

And boy, is it cold.

Although it had not yet snowed, there was an icy chill in the air on the day of my visit.

Frost was settling across the ground as Blake McGreedy led me deeper into the Morristown encampment to a recreation of Soldier Huts.

This is where, and this is how, the Continental Army's rank and file would have lived during that unbearable winter.

The Continental Army was arriving at Jockey Hollow just about the same time that we are here.

And until they established and built structures like this, the men had to sleep on the open ground or in tents.

So the priority is to get them into shelter as quickly as possible.

They're exposed to the elements during what is the coldest winter that they've ever experienced.

Probably.

Soldiers built every hut by hand from local timber that was harvested just for this purpose.

So they would have had to transport the lumber here, here these logs, to complete these structures.

To say nothing of the fact that the terrain here is not very level.

Well we can see, yeah, there are hills around us.

Yeah, we're standing on a hillside right now, meaning that you had to locate the right kind of trees, and then drag those uphill, downhill, to where you need them in camp.

It was really grueling labor.

George Washington issued strict orders regulating the dimensions of the huts.

The timber was in relatively short supply, so were tools.

There could be no access.

We think that in order to build the encampment at Jockey Hollow, the Army cut down about 2,000 acres worth of forest to construct about 1,000 huts.

And who is living here?

In huts like this, you would have seen rank and file soldiers of the Continental Army and sometimes women and children.

That might surprise you.

Women and children endured the freezing winter here too.

Children who followed the army did so because they had no other choice.

They needed food, they needed shelter, and the army was the only means to do that.

As a result, in a matter of weeks, the population swelled to 10,000 people.

That's about one third the population of Philadelphia at the time.

Jockey Hollow essentially became a small city of log houses, and it was constructed quickly by men whose lungs had to be burning from the biting Arctic air they were breathing in.

So I'm looking at this structure right here.

A snow drift is going to come up, and you pretty much cover the side of this building.

How are you getting in and out?

How are you functioning?

Soldiers have to dig themselves out with whatever tools were available to them.

That could be spades.

That could be hatchets.

That could often be their bare or gloved hands.

Daily life in and around the huts after snowstorms was quite difficult.

They'd have to dig trenches through the snow, follow footpaths as best they could to get themselves supplies, to listen to orders that were announced during the day, to go out on patrol, to go out on fatigue duty, to complete all those tasks around, you know, five, six feet high drifts was almost impossible for soldiers.

And they're cold, they're undernourished, they probably haven't slept well, and they're having to do incredibly difficult work.

The winter was so remarkably awful, George Washington and others wrote about what was happening in their papers and diaries.

Here is a sample of what was said.

January 2nd, a massive three-day blizzard hit Morristown, burying the encampment in four feet of snow.

January 7th, an astonishing morning, for the dreadful storm increases.

Besides the snowing and blowing with violence, the cold is very intense.

January 13th, a very cold day.

We think the severest of any that has come.

There are scores of entries similar to these.

The frost and cold were relentless enemy, an enemy that didn't hesitate to ambush both soldiers and civilians.

The hard winter, however, does not discriminate.

The same terrible conditions that enveloped the Continental Army here at Jockey Hollow, the British experienced those same conditions in New York City.

The wicked winter also drove the British to extremes.

They were desperate to escape the intense and debilitating cold.

They're really struggling to find firewood.

That's one of the most precious resources of any winter, particularly this one.

We believe the British cut down almost every single tree on Manhattan Island to find enough firewood for their army.

Cutting down every tree in New York City might not sound all that egregious.

However at the time it enraged the colonists and advanced the view that the British didn't really care about the region.

That to the British the colonies were only about resources.

The Patriots argued if you cared about the future if you believe the colonies were more than a resource to be exploited then you could not remain loyal.

This contributes to the idea that the British are not good stewards of the land.

So while it may not have been decisive, the hard winter did have a large impact on public sentiment.

The hard winter also dealt a powerful blow to shipping.

In New York Harbor, commerce froze, literally.

That really changed the military situation around New York City.

The British had to provide muskets to people in towns.

They thought the Continental Army might attack them from across the ice.

Wow.

As we continue our excursion in and around Jockey Hollow, Blake McGrady takes me to the Wick House, a farmhouse that stood at the time of the Revolution.

We're standing next to a garden right here.

I'm curious, how did they deal with the food issue?

The Continental Army was poorly supplied even in the best of times, and this certainly is not the best of times.

They had hoped that they could rely on livestock, crops, farm products from New England, from the mid-Atlantic and maybe even the southern states, but the hard winter and all that snow blocks the roads.

The Continental Army endured much during this volatile winter.

But of all the hardships, I can't imagine anything worse than the never-ending hunger.

At times when the supply crisis was really dire, they were down to eating the bark off of trees.

Washington and leadership of the Continental Army faced this tough dilemma.

Do they want to respect the property rights of local farmers, or do they want to see the Army go hungry?

At times, it was a really difficult choice that he had to navigate to the best of his ability.

The challenges were so great that the hard winter of 79-80 is what historians feel elevated George Washington to a whole new level.

Washington had preserved his army and the promise of a new nation against a cruel and savage assault.

This winter galvanized the Patriots' resolve, and that's what sets Morristown apart.

And yet we don't hear all that much about Morristown.

When we think about the worst winter of the American Revolution, Valley Forge comes to mind.

The weather at Valley Forge must have been even worse, right Blake?

So in all the images you've probably seen of Valley Forge, it looks like it's the worst winter of the American Revolution.

>> Temperatures hovered in the low 40s, not the mid teens.

They got more rain than they did snow.

It was a more mild winter.

>> That's astounding.

The winter was worse in Morristown than it was in valley forge.

Then why do we think otherwise?

To help me better understand this surprising development, I turn to Philadelphia's Museum of the American Revolution.

I'm met by Scott Stevenson, the President and CEO.

He's one of our nation's great authorities on revolutionary era history.

Scott joins me in the perfect spot for this conversation, in front of the iconic March to Valley Forge painting, which hangs in the museum.

I think there's a couple reasons why Valley Forge has stuck in our memory as Americans.

One is it was a different moment in the course of this long conflict, this eight year conflict, the desperation of the Continental Army at the end of 1777.

Remember, the British Army has literally captured Philadelphia, the headquarters of the Revolution.

The painting behind us from artist William B.T.

Trago captures the mood and morale of the troops as they march to Valley Forge.

The scene is imagined but inspired by very real accounts from an early biography of George Washington.

And the biographer said that you could mark the route of the army into Valley Forge by the bloody footsteps in the snow.

The moment depicted in this painting had to be the low point for the Patriots, one filled with despair.

However, at Valley Forge something remarkable happened.

The soldiers transformed into formidable fighters.

How it happened is an incredible story but one for another time.

For our purposes it's enough to say that from the ashes rose a Phoenix.

The army that marches out of Valley Forge in June of 1778 has a sort of coherence, a confidence, I think a little bit of excitement about engaging the British Army because of all that training that took place.

As a result in the years after the Revolution, Valley Forge became symbolic.

It became the moment when the potential of a new nation turned into the promise of one.

It's a kind of story of transformation.

Over the years that followed, Valley Forge inspired countless works, including The Prayer at Valley Forge by Arnold Freberg, Washington and von Steuben at Valley Forge by Howard Pyle and the painting behind us, Trego's March to Valley Forge and more.

Long before TV and radio, it was fine art with its scale and palette of colors that shaped public perception.

As a result, Valley Forge stepped forward in history.

And so this painting I think has really, since it was painted in 1883, generations of Americans have really found inspiration in that image of suffering and persistence and patriotism of Washington's Army.

However, as you look at the paintings of Valley Forge, you might think these could be images of Morristown too.

You're not wrong about that.

It's something Blake McGrady mentioned to me at the soldier huts.

You know, as history is written and rewritten, it's like a game of telephone, you start to borrow here's something from one person and here's something from another and it comes together in one narrative and that's sort of what happens in the history of Valley Forge.

Many experiences that happened at other winters of the war kind of get folded into the story that Americans tell about that encampment in particular.

Interesting.

And as this investigation draws to a close that seems like a good place to What you know about Valley Forge actually has some jockey hollow blended into the story, particularly what you think you know about weather.

That's something Scott Stevenson is keenly aware of and hopes to untangle in his ongoing efforts to parse the history of the revolution.

One of the things that we're trying to do through public history, through the museum, etc., is to broaden people's understanding of this conflict.

And hopefully we can make Morristown rise a little bit in people's consciousness.

So, the next time you hear about Valley Forge, remind yourself some of the story is rooted in Morristown, too.

See you next time.

[music] [chimes] [music] Have you driven past a history marker and said to yourself, "I should tell Drive-By History about that"?

Well, drop us a line.

You can reach us through our website, which is drivebyhistory.org, or through our Facebook page.

Who knows?

Your history marker could end up being our next investigation.

Made possible by the Preserve New Jersey Historic Preservation Fund.

Administered by the New Jersey Historic Trust, State of New Jersey.

And the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

We explore, cultivate, and champion the public humanities in order to strengthen New Jersey's diverse community.

Also, the New Jersey Historical Commission, enriching the lives of the public by preserving the historical record and advancing interest in and awareness of New Jersey's past.

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