(I meant to post this earlier, but I haven't felt up to it until today)
May 19th, 1780 - New England's "Dark Day."
The sun and moon had glowed red for days, and then, on My 19th, 1780, it was reported that "a natural gloom settled across the New England landscape, and by noon, the sun had all but been blotted out."
Read by some as a dark omen, and by others the Biblical End Times, a mysterious day-long darkness prompted various residents of America's east coast to postulate:
"Friday morning early, the sun appeared red, as it had for several days before, but by noon, the sky thickened and darkness fell; a sign of God's displeasure."
Samuel Williams, professor of mathematics and philosophy at Harvard University wrote:
"It came before the hours of 10 and 11 A.M. and continued into the middle of the next night. As a matter of approach, it seemed to appear first of all in New England's southwest, the Darkness coming on the winds and clouds from that direction. The degree to which this Darkness arose was different at different places. It was very remarkable, and appeared to extend to all directions of the New England states."
A journalist described it as "a light grassy hue near the color of pale cider that came on as an appearance of the whole visible heavens, finally attended with a gloom nearly resembling that of an eclipse of the sun."
General George Washington described the event in his diary: "Heavy and uncommon kinds of clouds, dark at the same time bright, and a reddish kind of light intermixed with them, brightening and darkening alternatively."
Other accounts described the blackened sky on May 19th 1780 as:
"A faint red yellow and brown, during which objects appeared green verging to blue, and those which normally appear white were highly tinged with yellow."
"So dark that the fowls went to their roosts, the cocks crew, and the whipoorwill sung their usual evening serenade at midday."
and reported that "we had to light candles in order to see well enough to carry on our usual daytime business."
"At noon, the largest print could not be read by persons with good eyes, even by the light of the largest window pane in the home, one could not determine the time of day, and candles cast a shade on the wall so well defined that the profiles could be taken with as much ease as in the night."
"At 1 in the afternoon, the Darkness in New England was greater than it had been at any time on any day before, and the birds, having sung their evening songs, became silent."
A union soldier reported that "It was so terrible dark that we could not see our hand before us, a white page held inches from the eyes appeared as black velvet, and I could not discern the windows of my home, for all was a universal black."
"The inky black was as gross as ever had been observed since the Almighty gave birth to light."
"The moon was full, yet it's ruddy light was extinguished by the pall of Gloom as a truly terrible blackness descended on the land as a kind of Egyptian Darkness."
"The atmosphere is charged with Vapors of differing densities occupying different heights, rays of light suffering a variety of refraction and reflections, therefore becoming so weakened or absorbed as to not fall upon objects of the Earth in the usual manner."
One attributed the Dark Day of May 19th, 1780 as "a blazing Star passing between the Earth and Sun," and another to opine the case as "a rise in aqueous, sulfurous, betimius, selenius, vitreous particles into the atmosphere," and yet another to "vast quantities of heterogeneous Vapors generated in consequence to a great body of snow which covered the Earth for so long that, upon the passing of winter, the Earth exhaled with the coming of the long-awaited warm, dry weather."
It was noted that New England's religious residents, a majority in the region, saw the Dark Day as a Biblical warning, and turned to God. Churches filled with record numbers of attendees, there was a record number of Puritan and Shaker converts, and Protestants rushed into their meeting houses.
Speaking to a journalist, clergyman Timothy Dwight stated, "The general opinion prevails that the Day of Judgement is at hand."
But a contributor to the Continental Journal accurately noted "a strong sooty smell, and a light scum formed on rain water" that he found to be "nothing but the black ash of burnt leaves from woods that had been burning for many days."
However, it wasn't until over 2 centuries later that New England's Dark Day was finally properly investigated.
A study by researchers at the University of Missouri determined that
tree rings in the Algonquin region of Canada revealed a major forest fire had occurred in the early spring of 1780, and that the weather on May 16th of that year created the perfect conditions for carrying it's smoke and ash in a southeasterly direction for hundreds of miles.
