Howdy neighbor.
Today we mourn the anniversary of one of the saddest incidents in White Mountain history. As of this Friday, two hundred years ago up the valley of the Saco, a terrible doom came stealing in the night, to sweep away the lives of nine souls without damaging so much as a dish in the little house in which they lived. Call it the wrath of God, the visitation of an avenging Angel; two centuries ago, death visited the home of Samuel and Polly Willey, together with their children Eliza, Jeremiah, Martha, Elbridge, and Sally, ages 13, 11, 9, 7, and 5. They lived three miles below Crawford’s Notch at a place known as the Narrows, keeping a farm and tavern with the help of two hired men, David Nickerson and David Allen. Here, on the night of August 28, in the midst of the fiercest storm in living memory, all nine would perish, and their strange deaths remain to this day one of the most haunting disasters of old New England.
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