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WILLEY
THE WILLEY FAMILY CATASTROPHE IN THE
WHITE MOUNTAINS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
IN AUGUST 1826
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This was transcribed by
Karen Heath Penman Jan 2001
From photocopy of transcript on film by
Nettie White Wolcott, comp. 1958.
Original film is in possession of Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Family History Library in Salt Lake
City, UT. Film title is :"A Manuscript
copy of the Biography of Chandler Graham
Heath of Fryeburg, Oxford Co., ME and
Mineral Point, Iowa Co. WI and The
Willey Family Catastrophe in the White
Mountains of New Hampshire in August
1826"
THE Willey House, Mr. Spaulding tells us,
was built as early as 1793. In 1803, a road
was laid out through the Notch to Bartlett,
at a cost of $4,0000.00, and so many teams
passed with produce that it was quite
necessary and not unprofitable to keep a
house and stable in the Notch for their
accommodation. In the Autumn 1825, Mr.
Samuel WiIley Jr. with his family moved
into the little tenement, which has derived
such tragic interest from his name.
During the following Winter, we are told
that his hospitable kindness and shelter
were greeted with as much gratitude by
travelers who were obliged to contend with
biting frost, the furious storms and the
drifted snow of the Notch, as the Monks of
St. Bernard receive from the chilled
wanderers of the Alps. The teamsters used to
say, that when a furious northwester blew
through the Notch in Winter, it took two men
to hold one man's hair on. In the Spring of
1826, Mr. Willey began to enlarge the
conveniences of the little inn for
entertaining guests, and in the early Summer
the spot looked very attractive (1. Starr
King)
There was a beautiful meadow In front
stretching to the foot of the frowning wall
of Mt. Webster and gemmed with tall rock
maples. To be sure Mt. Willey rose at a
rather threatening angle some 2000 ft.
behind the house, but it was not so savage
In appearance as Mt. Webster opposite, and
pretty much the whole of its broad steep
wall was draped in green. In a bright June
morning the little meadow farm flecked with
nibbling sheep and cooled by the patches of
shadow flung far out over the green grass
from the thick maple foliage, must have
seemed to a traveler pausing there and
hearing the pleasant murmur of the-Saco
(river) and the thrill sweetness of the
Canada whistler as romantic a spot as one
could fly to, to escape the fever and the
perils of the World.
Late in June, Mr. 'Willey and his
wife, looking from the back windows of their
house in the afternoon of a misty day, saw a
large mass of the mountain above them
sliding through the fog toward their meadows
and almost in line of the house itself.
Rocks and earth came plunging down sweeping
whole trees before them that would stand
erect In the swift slide for rods before
they fell. The slide moved under their eye
to the very foot of the mountain and hurled
Its frightful burden across the road.
At
first they were greatly terrified and
resolved to remove from the Notch. But Mr.
Willey, on reflection felt confident that
such an event was not likely to occur again,
and was satisfied with building a strong hut
or cave a little below the house in the
Notch, which would certainly be secure and
to which the-family might fly for shelter If
they should see or hear another avalanche
that seemed to, threaten their home.
Later in the summer there was a long hot
drought. By the middle of August the earth
to a great depth in the mountain region was
dried to powder. Then came several days of
South wind betokening copious rain. On
Sunday the 27th of August, the rain began to
fall. On Monday the 28th, the storm was very
severe, and the rain was a deluge. Towards
the evening, the clouds around the White
Mountain range and over the Notch, to those
who saw them from a distance, were very
heavy, black, and awful. It was plain that
they were to be busy in their office as a
(Factory of river-and of rain), Later in the
Night, they poured their burden in streams.
Between nine o'clock in the evening and the
dawn of Tuesday, the Saco rose 24 ft. and
swept, the whole intervale between the Notch
and Conway. The little Rocky Branch in
Bartlett, a feeder of the Saco, brought down
trees rocks, and logs from the hillside and
formed a dam near a log cabin on its meadow,
which made in a little time a pond of water
that undermined and floated the house, so
that the family could not escape. They
climbed into the upper part of the cabin and
for hours were tossed on the mad flood,
hearing the roar of the water and the storm,
and expecting every moment to be crushed or
drowned. The cabin however, held together
and when the water subsided, they were
rescued from their ark. Near by on the Ellis
River, which also pours into the Saco, a
herd of colts were swept from a yard where
they were penned, and their dead bodies were
found mangled by rocks and roots several
miles below.
Around Ethan Crawford's house just
below the Notch a pond of over 200 acres was
formed in a few hours: a bridge was dashed
against a shed and carried away 90 ft. of
it, many of the sheep were drowned, and
those which escaped looked as though they
had been washed in a mud puddle. The water
came within 18 in. of the door, and between
the house and stable a river was running,
and the channel of the Ammonoosuc near by
which on Sunday morning was a few yards
wide, and over hung by interlaced trees of
the ancient forest was torn out ten times as
wide by a mighty torrent that whirled off
the banks and trees, and filled the broader
bed with boulders, amid which in Summer now
the river is almost lost. In the little
settlement of Gilead also thousands of tons
of dirt and rocks and forest were loosened
from the over hanging hills. The roar of the
slides was far more frightful than the
thunder and the trails of fire from the
rushing boulders, more awful than the
lightning. For hours the inhabitants were in
consternation. Their houses trembled as
though an earthquake shook them and they
expected every moment to be buried under an
avalanche.
At Abel Crawford's six miles from the
Willey-House, the river over-flowed its
banks, beat down the fences, tore up the
grain,, dashed to pieces a new saw mill,
swept the logs, boards and ruins into the
sand, and then circling the house flooded
the cellar, sapped part of the wall and rose
2 ft. on the lower floors. Mr. Crawford was
not at home, but the heroic wife placed
lighted candles in the windows, and to
prevent the house from being demolished by
the jam, that was threatening it, stood at a
window near the corner and in the midst of
the tempest pushed away with a pole the
timber which the mad current would send as a
battering ram against the walls, and now and
then the lightning would show her the
drowning sheep bleating for help which were
hurried past the house in the flood.
On
the morning of Tuesday the sun rose into a
cloudless sky and the air was remarkably
transparent. The North Conway farmers busy
saving what they could from the raging flood
of the Saco, saw clearly how terrible the
storm had been upon the Mt. Washington
range. The whole line was devastated by
landslides. Great grooves could be,
distinctly seen where the torrents had torn
out all the loose earth and stones and left
the solid ledge of the mountain bare.
Wherever there was a brook, stones from 2 to
5 ft. in diameter were rolled down by
thousands in tracks from ten to twenty rods
wide dashing huge hemlocks before them and
leaving no root or tree in its path.
Soon after a party ascending by the
Ammonoosuc counted 30 slides 11 along the
acclivity they climbed, some of which
ravaged more than a 100 acres of the
wilderness not only mowing off trees, but
tearing out all the soil and-rocks to a
depth of 20 to 30 ft., and in the
declivities toward North Conway, it was
thought that this storm dismantled more of
the great range during the terrible hours of
that Monday night than all the rains of a
100 years before.
What had been the fate of the little house
in the Notch and of the Willey family during
the deluge? All communications with them on
Tuesday morning was cut off by the floods of
the Saco. But at 4 o'clock in the P.M. of
Tuesday, a traveler passing Ethan
Crawford's some 7 miles above the Willey
House, desired, if possible to get through
the Notch that night. By swimming a horse
across the widest part of the flood, he was
put on the track. In the narrowest part of
the road within the Notch, the water had
torn out huge rocks and left holes 20 ft.
deep and had opened trenches, also ten feet
deep and 20 ft. long. But the traveler,
while daylight lasted could make his way on
foot over the torn and obstructed road and
managed to reach the lower part of the Notch
just before dark. The little house was
standing, but no human inmates to greet him
and what desolation around?
The
mountain behind it once robed in beautiful
green was striped for 2 or 3 miles with
ravines deep and freshly torn. The lovely
little meadow in front was covered with wet
sand and rocks intermixed with branches of
trees with slivered trunks, whose splintered
ends looked similar to an old peeled birch
broom, and with dead logs, which had
evidently long been buried beneath the
mountain soil. Not even any of the bushes
that grew up on the meadow in front of the
house were to be seen. The slide of the
mountain had evidently divided, not many
rods above the house, against a sharp ledge
of rock. It had then joined its frightful
mass in front of the house and pushed along
the bed of the Saco, covering the meadow in
some places 30 ft. with the frightful debris
and mire. The traveler entered the house and
went through it. The doors were all open.
The beds and their clothing showed that they
had been hurriedly left, a Bible was lying
open on a table, as if it had been read just
before the family had departed. The traveler
consoled himself at last with the feeling
that the inmates had escaped to Abel
Crawford's below and then tried to
sleep in one of the deserted beds. But in
the night he heard moanings which frightened
him so much, that he lay sleepless til dawn.
Then he found that they were the groans of
an ox in the stable that was partly crushed
under broken timbers, which had fallen in.
The 2 horses were killed. He released the ox
and went on his way toward Bartlett.
Before any news of the disaster had reached
Conway, the faithful dog came down to Mr.
Lovejoy's and by moanings tried to make
the family understand what had taken place.
Not succeeding he left and after being seen
frequently on the road, some 'times heading
North and then South running almost at top
speed as though bent on some absorbing
errand he soon disappeared from the region
and has never since been seen. On Wednesday
evening suspicions of the safety of the
family were carried down to Bartlett and
North Conway, where Mr. Willey's father and
brothers lived. But they were not credited.
The terrible certainty to be communicated to
the father t in the most thrilling way. At
midnight of Wednesday a messenger reached
the banks of the river opposite his house in
Lower Bartlett, but could not cross. He blew
a trumpet blast after blast. The noise. and
the mountain echoes startled the family and
the neighborhood from their repose. They
soon gathered on the river bank and heard
the sad message shouted to them through the
darkness. On Thursday the 3lst of August
1826 the family and many neighbors were able
to reach the notch. Tall Ethan Crawford
left his farm which the floods had ravaged
and went down through the Notch to meet them
"when I got there" he says "on seeing the
friends of that well-beloved family and
having been acquainted with them for many
years, my heart was full and my tongue
refused utterance and I could not for a
considerable length of time speak to one of
them and could only express my regards I had
to them in pressing their hands but gave
full vent to tears. This was the 2nd time my
eyes were wet with tears since grown to
manhood."
Search was commenced at once for the buried
bodies. The first that was exhumed was one
of the hired men, David Allen, a man
of powerful frame and remarkable strength.
He was but slightly disfigured. He was found
near the top of a pile of earth and
shattered timbers with "hands clenched and
full of broken sticks and small limbs of
trees." Soon the bodies of Mrs. Willey
and her husband were discovered, the latter
not so crushed that it could not be
recognized. No more could be found that day.
Crude coffins were prepared and the next
day, Friday, about sunset, the simple burial
service was offered. Elder Samuel
Haseltine, standing amidst the company
of strong manly forms, whose faces wet with
tears, commenced the service with the words
of Isaiah, "who hath measured the waters in
the hollow of his hand and meted out Heaven
with a span and comprehended the dust of the
earth in a measure and weighed the mountains
in scales and the hills in a balance." How
fitting this language in that solemn pass
and how unspeakably more impressive must the
words have seemed when the mountains
themselves took them up and literally
responded them (picture of the Willey House)
joining as mourners in the burial liturgy;
For the Minister stood so that each one of
these sublime words was given back by the
echo, in a tone as clear and reverent as
that in which they were uttered. We may
easily believe that the "effect of all this
was soul stirring beyond description."
The
next day the body of the youngest child,
about 3 years old, was found and also that
of the other hired man. On Sunday, the
eldest daughter was discovered at a distance
from the others across the river. A bed was
found on the ruins near her body. It was
supposed that she was drowned, as no bruises
or mark was found upon her. She was 12 years
old and Ethan Crawford tells us "she
had acquired a good Education and seemed
more like a gentleman's daughter of fashion
and affluence than the daughter of one who
had located himself in the midst of the
mountains. These were buried without any
religious service, 3 children, a daughter
and 2 sons were never found.
It
seems to us that nothing can interpret so
effectively the terror of this tragedy as
the connected statement of the simple facts
so far as they are known. We are indebted
for the facts to Rev. Benjamin
Willey's interesting "Incidents in White
Mountain History," and the story of Ethan
Crawford's wife (now out of print).
But the horror of that night to the doomed
family, who can imagine that? The glimpses
given us of the fury of the storm, by the
peril of Abel Crawford's family, and
by the experience of the settlers that were
tossed in their hut upon the flood of
the-Rocky Branch, furnished but faint
coloring of the awfulness of the tempest as
the Willey family must have seen and felt
it.
About 2 years after a man who had moved into
the same house witnessed a thunder tempest
in the night, which was not nearly so
terrible as the storm in 1826, but which
supplies us with better means of conceiving
the tremendous passion of the elements amid
which the Willey family were overwhelmed,
and what must have been their consternation
and despair. We are told that the "Horror of
great darkness" that filled the Notch would
be the blinding horror of lightning that now
and then kindled the vast gray wall of Mt.
Webster opposite the house, opened (The
grisly gulfs and slaty rifts which seam its
shivered head) and showed the torrents that
were hissing down its black shelves and
frightful precipices. Next a rock, loosened
by a stream or smitten by a thunderbolt
would leap down the wall, followed all the
way by a trail of splendor that lighted the
whole gorge and making a reverberating noise
by its concussions, more frightful than the
roar of the thunder, which seemed to make
the very ground tremble. To this was added
the rage of the river and the fury of the
rain, and all united to produce a dismay
which we may well believe prevented the
inmates from speaking for half an hour, and
caused them "to stand and look at each other
almost petrified with fear." For several
hours the Willey family were enveloped in
(such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid
thunder, such groans of roaring wind and
rain) as flamed and roared in the storm that
beat upon Lear. The father and mother,
anxious for their young children, doubtless
saw, with their minds eye, that fearful
landslide of June more vividly than any
horror which the lightening showed them on
the walls of this gigantic prison. In every
pause of the thunder, they were straining to
hear the more fearful sound of the grinding
avalanche. And what must have been the
concentrated agony and dread, when they
heard the moving of the loosened ridge,
heard nearer and nearer its accumulation
roar; heard and saw, perhaps through one
flaming sheet of the lightning that it was
rushing in line of their little home; and
unable to command their nerves or hoping to
out run its flood rushed from their security
into (The tyranny of the open night too
rough, for nature to endure).
The relatives who studied the ground
closely after the disaster, were unable to
conjecture why the family could not have out
run the landslide or crossed its track, if
they left the house as soon as they heard
its descent far up the mountain. Some of
them at least they thought, should thus have
been able to escape its devastation. Mrs.
James Willey informs us that the spirit
of his brother appeared to him in a dream
and told him that the family left the house
some time before the avalanche fearing to be
drowned or floated off by the Saco, which
had risen to their door. They fled back, he
said farther up the mountain to be safe
against the peril of the water and thus when
the landslide moved toward them, were
compelled to run a greater distance than it
would have been required if they had staid
in their home, while they would have been
swept off by the flood, if they had kept the
line of the road which could have conducted
them out of the Notch. It is a singular
fact, Mr. Benjamin Willey tells us,
that this explanation accounts for more
known features of the catastrophe than any
other which has been formed. It explains why
the eldest daughter was found without a
bruise, as though she had been drowned; and
also the fact that a bed was found near her
body, with which certainly the family would
not have encumbered themselves, if they had
rushed from the house.
In the single hope of escaping destruction
when the avalanche was near. It accounts for
the appearance of the body of the hired man
who was first discovered. And by connecting
the terror of the sudden flood with the
other horrors of the night, it brings the
picture into harmony with what we know of
the ravage and disaster along the line of
the Saco below. The Bible was open on the
table in the Willey House when it was
entered the next day. The family was then
secure from the wrath of elements that
desolate the earth. At what place could the
book have been found open more fitting than
the 18th Psalm, to express the horrors of
the tempest and the deliverance which the
spirit finds? "The Lord also thundered in
the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice,
hail stones and coals of fire. Then the
channels of water were seen, and the
foundations of the world were discovered at
thy rebuke, 0 Lord, at the blast of the
breath of thy nostrils, He sent from above,
he took me, he drew me out of many waters.
He brought me forth also into a large place;
he delivered me, because he delighted in
me." Upon the spot where a portion of the
family were buried, it was a custom for
several years for each visitor to cast a
stone. Thus a large monument was reared out
of the ruins of the slide.
(I, Benjamin Willey)
On the boundary between Conway and Bartlett,
near the homestead of my father, on a high
bank overlooking intervale and the Saco, is
the burying place of my family. Here rest
the remains of the bodies of my family
recovered from the avalanche. In one wide
grave they sleep, Father and mother, and 2
children. Three yet sleep among the ruins of
the storm. A broad stone near the entrance
of the yard marks their resting place. The
following are the names of those destroyed,
Samuel Willey Jr.
age
38.
b, ca, 1788.
Polly L. Willey,
35.
" "
1791.
(children)
Eliza Ann
"
13
Jeremiah L.
"
11
Martha G.
"
9
Elbridge G.
"
7
Sally
"
5
(hired men)
David Nickerson
"
21
David Allen
"
37
First 2, Parents. Next 5, children. Last 2
hired men. The first 3 and the last 3 have
been found. This farm is now owned by the
Rev. Dr. Merriman and Mrs. Merriman
daughter of the Rev. Dr. Merriman and Mrs.
Merriman daughter of the late E. B.
Bigelow, in book printed
1900.Copyright by M.E. Eastman "East of the
White Hills" in it
"The Story of the Willey
Family." (Note by Nettie White Wolcott-
James Willey was brother of Samuel
Willey Jr. [killed in avalanche].
Samuel Willey Sr. lived in Bartlett)
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