The Long Winter of 1880-81; 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2026 Week 39 theme: "What Wasn't Written Down"

When I have trouble sleeping, I sometimes listen to podcasts. The selection must be done with care, preferably something only moderately interesting, delivered by a soothing voice to lull me back to sleep. I recently selected "How Frontier Families Survived the Long Winter of 1880" from the Boring History to Sleep podcast only to discover it was not at all boring! My goodness! I had family members who must have endured that winter. Why did I not know this? Why had they not written that down as part of the family history?

The passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 had opened up a vast area of the American western frontier for farming. The US Census had fortuitously been taken as of 1 June 1880, making it easy to see who was probably living in the affected area a few months later when winter arrived in the Dakota Territory in mid October -- and stayed -- and stayed for about 7-8 months into May of 1881. With one blizzard following another and snow piling on top of snow, it must have seemed like an endless onslaught by Mother Nature.

Which family members might have lived through that terrible winter in the Dakota Territory?

In January 1879, my great great grandparents, Swedish Norwegian immigrants Israel Anderson (1829-1910) and his wife Johanna Gundersdatter (1833-1900) had moved to a homestead 7 miles west and about three-fourths mile north of Grafton in what would become North Dakota.  They travelled there by train and horse-drawn covered wagon.  By this time their son Andrew was 23 years old, and would soon meet his future wife Jorgene Torkelson, who had also moved with her family to the Grafton area.

Israel Anderson, his wife Johanna and their children aged 2-19 show up in Pembina County, Dakota Territories in the 1880 census.

1880 US Census for Pembina County, Dakota

(One of Israel's daughters, Olava,  recalled a celebration at her parents' homestead on July 4, 1880 (just a month after this census), for which she and other young people made an American flag from flour sacks, using red berries and bluing to give it the necessary colouring. This shows there were some happier days ahead of the brutal winter that was to come.) 

On the same census page, their oldest son, my great grandfather Andrew I. Anderson and his wife Jorgena (Torkelson)  are listed in a nearby household. Andrew and Jorgena were newlyweds, having married in 1879 shortly after the Anderson and Torkelson families had moved to the area. 

Andrew Anderson, 24, and Jorgena Torkelson, 17, at the time of their marriage.

Fortunately the newlyweds had nearby support of other family members. In addition to the Israel Anderson family, Jorgena's older brother Jorgen is listed in the census just ahead of Andrew. No doubt it was important to have nearby family during this long winter. It isn't clear just how far apart their homes were and it is well-known that travelling any distance during a blizzard can easily lead to becoming disoriented in a white-out and freezing to death, sometimes just a few yards from home. 

Jorgena gave birth to the young couple's first child, a daughter Josephine, on 16 February 1881, still in the thick of the long winter. It must have been terrifying for young women facing childbirth at this time. People had to be self-reliant for all medical and survival skills as no one might be close enough to provide assistance.

Author Laura Ingalls Wilder was a girl living in De Smet, Dakota Territory at the time. She later wrote The Long Winter based on her experiences. Although a work of fiction, meteorologists and historians have verified the accuracy of her reports in this book. 

Her book describes how constant blizzards and snow buildup on rail tracks blocked the trains carrying coal and food supplies. Snow accumulations often trapped people inside their homes with the doors plugged; sometimes all that could be seen of a settler's home was smoke apparently emanating from the top of a snowdrift. There are many stories of how people coped with the lack of supplies, with some being forced to burn furniture and treasured possessions for heat. Meager food supplies had to be stretched as best they could. Twisting hay into burn sticks to heat homes became a new skill to master; children were called upon to assist in whatever way they could.

The Jamestown Weekly Sun and Weekly Alert, Jamestown, N.D., 4 Feb. 1881, p.3

Isolation, cold and hunger would have taken a toll on mental health, marriages and family life. One harrowing newspaper account tells of a husband losing his temper with his wife and locking her outside where she froze to death in the snow. 

In his fictionalized classic of Norwegian homesteaders in the Dakotas, Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, O. E. Rölvaag had one young wife losing her mind in the bleak situation and another character freezing to death in the snow while venturing out in a blizzard to seek assistance for a dying friend. As with the Laura Ingalls Wilder story, his account is considered to accurately reflect the situation these homesteaders encountered during that endless winter. On pages 486-7, he says:

Day and night the snow fell. From the 15th of October, when it began, until after the middle of April, it seldom ceased. From the four corners of the earth if flew; but of all the winds that brought it the south wind was the worst; for that whisked and matted the flakes into huge grey discs, which fell to the ground in clinging, woolly folds . . . .And all winter the sun stayed in his house; he crept out only now and then to pack down the snow; that was to make room for more. . . . The suffering was great that winter. Famine came; supplies of all kinds gave out; for no one thought when the first snowfall began, that winter had come. Who had ever heard of its setting in in the middle of autumn?

Many of the families were, like the Andersons, new settlers in the area. They probably had not had the time or wherewithal  to build much more than a sod hut and perhaps a barn or shack to accommodate a few animals. The produce on hand was likely just a small amount of grain after the first season of breaking some sod and planting. 

Contemporary news reports confirm the dire situation that developed. 

Yankton Press and Dakotan, Yankton, S.D. 3 May 1881 from Newspapers.com

The Bismarck, N.D. newspapers from the time consistently denied that the trains weren't getting through. Probably parts of the region fared better than others; most likely a few trains did get through from time to time. Some tried to see the bright side of the endless snowfall. 

Bismarck Tribune, Bismarck, N.D., 11 Feb 1881 from Newspapers.com

My personal experience with snowy winters on the Canadian prairies just north of the Dakotas cannot compare in terms of privation. Even so, I recall the winter of 1965-1966 for the unrelenting snowstorms that lasted far too long. By my time, there was a snowplow available to open the roads for trips for supplies and to ensure we could get to school most days (even though weekend plans were almost always canceled). The snow was piled so high that my siblings built tunnels through it - no doubt against my parents' admonitions about safety. You could actually look down on the roof of the house from the top of the snow bank behind it. Although the situation was tedious and very annoying, we were not in any danger of running out of food or fuel as my ancestors may well have been.

Survivors of various traumatic and difficult events often shy away from speaking of those troubles in future years. The recent Covid pandemic, for example, is already fading from many memories and will not likely form a significant part of the ongoing family saga for most of us (unless we lost a loved one during that terrible time). When an epidemic or a stretch of bad luck or terrible weather finally come to an end, many of us just want to get on with life in the better times. Perhaps it isn't surprising that none of the Andersons seem to have written down an account of their experiences during that long terrible winter of 1880-1881. 

Some Resources:

• Boustead, Shulsky and Hilberg, "The Long Winter of 1880/81", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2020 accessible online at https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/101/6/bamsD190014.xml
• Rölvaag, O.E., Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, Translated from the Norwegian by Lincoln Colcord and the Author, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1927 
• Wilder, Laura Ingalls, The Long Winter, New York: HarperCollins, 1940