“The sudden frost of 1936 had a vengeful effect. It was like a wild prairie fire that cut through everything in its path. And woe to him who was far from human habitation, for his bite was fierce. I was in the country at that time and I tell you, young man, you will never see such weather if you live a thousand years,” said an unidentified old pioneer remembering in the Bloomington Weekly manager newspaper of February 19, 1885.

It was the afternoon of December 20, 1836, less than a week before Christmas. Around two in the afternoon, a cold air mass blew into central Illinois – but not just any cold front.

“This is a truly worthy cold front. Old Testamentchapter and verse. It is described by McLean County pioneers as a raging, roaring and howling sound… “shaking and penetrating the firmament, like a distant and heavy cannonade,” said Bill Kemp, librarian of the McLean County History Museum.

As the raging, dark and even black clouds approached, the temperature dropped. Reports in western Illinois and elsewhere indicate that temperatures at sunrise were around 40 degrees, a bit warmer than average for the period. By 2 p.m. that afternoon, temperatures had dropped to around freezing. Or below, if you listen to some of the early settlers of McLean County.

“Who was willing to exaggerate, right?,” Kemp said. “The legends and traditions of the pioneers were well known, weren’t they? They will tell us somewhat dubiously that the temperature dropped about 60 degrees in about 15 minutes. Now, if that’s true or no, I can’t really say, but because of this climatological event known as a sudden change, or sudden freeze, as it sweeps through much of central Illinois.”

There are reports of a sudden freeze coming from as far north as Ottawa, Illinois, and as far south as Paris, Illinois.

“The snapping of forest trees could be heard three miles away. The barking of dogs froze into solid pieces and fell to the ground while the lowing of cattle, the grunting of pigs and the distressing cries of poultry filled the air with icicles,” the retrospective said half a century later in the Weekly manager. “There was death in the backyards of the pioneer farmers and in the wild prairies of the young state, the sudden frost left its deadly sting. »

In the days preceding this sudden change, there had been heavy snowfall. Then the weather got warmer. The day before, the landscape was muddy and muddy.

“Therein lies the danger for unsuspecting settlers,” Kemp said. “Often they work in the fields or move here and there and get wet. These plumping temperatures then become a matter of saving lives and limbs.”

However, it is difficult to separate fables from facts – and exaggeration was the rule of the day.

“Three of my horses were found dead,” recalled an old pioneer. “One of the animals was drinking and when I discovered my loss, I noticed that the bucket of water was frozen up to the animal’s nostrils. Two cows froze in place and around At night, when I took them into the barn to milk them, they were dead, I’ll tell you what! The weather was so cold that even the fire almost refused to burn.

Similar lies have been reported the “winter of deep snows” in 1831. There are many accounts of pioneers freezing in the saddle and having to be pulled from their horses as they rode home. Some stories are clearly apocryphal, betrayed by a particular lack of detail.

“Benjamin Wheeler, who was a settler in Hudson Township, tells the story of a father and daughter somewhere in McLean County who succumbed to the cold just a few miles before reaching the safety of their house,” Kemp said. “Wheeler never takes care to mention the names of this father and daughter and the other settlers. Other settlers tell the same story, but we never get the names of the father or daughter or the exact location where This happened. I suspect this is a strong exaggeration.

Some stories also appear in the volume The Good Old Days in McLean Countypublished in 1874. Most are true and some are not, Kemp said.

“This compiler has noted that the stories and incidents connected with this sudden change are endless and made very curious and strange by the pioneers who tell these stories,” he said.

Some of the most fantastical tales sound a lot like a fictional George Lucas episode. Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back 150 years later.

“Two men on their way to Bloomington were in the Little Vermillion Creek neighborhood when the sudden frost came on,” the old settler said in the Weekly Standard. “They rushed to the creek, but it was high and filled with moving ice. The men were 12 miles from any house and rather than freeze to death, they decided to kill their horses, cut them open, to crawl in and warm up. Unfortunately, this plan was unsuccessful and both men lost their lives.

In the film version, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker survived after using the same pattern with their “Tauntaun” mounts while Resistance forces were hiding from the Empire on the ice planet Hoth.

A typical account read: “The wind and its fury and power blew the water into small, well-defined waves, which froze in place. Horrible story is undoubtedly true, Kemp said.

He is Andrew Heredith from the Springfield area of ​​Sangamon County. He was driving more than 1,000 head of pigs to the Saint-Louis market and was surprised in the open meadow that day. They fled and found shelter in a nearby cabin, but left the pigs out in the open.

“The pigs piled on top of each other like pigs are wont to do to seek warmth,” Kemp said. “The next morning, Heredith and her men found a pyramid of 500 dead pigs that had suffocated.”

We can believe some stories of sudden changes and others we must seriously look at from the sidelines.

McHistoire is a partnership between WGLT and the McLean County History Museum bringing you the words of people from long ago.