Incidents of the Storm In and Near Jamaica

New York, 1895

Friday morning Gouveneur Edwards, of Jamaica, started with a team and a wagon loaded with bread to serve his customers at Far Rockaway. He found the snow drifts impassable on the road crossing the meadows, and turned his horses toward home. When near the residence of Isaac Fisher, on the Rockaway road, his team went into a snow bank, upsetting the wagon and breaking the pole. After much difficulty he reached Mr. Fisher's house, where he was taken care of for the night. He reached home Saturday afternoon. His ears and face were badly frozen.

The condition of the streets were such on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, that the village trustees had teams of horses and men at the truck and hose houses ready to haul the carriages in case of fire.

The storm caught many people short of fuel, and the coal yards were unable to fill all the orders on Friday and Saturday. Where it was found impossible to fill the orders sent to Van Allen's yard, customers were told that they would be served on Sunday rather than that they should suffer from the cold.

Friday night John Nichols, Mervin Snedeker and John Allen, of Jamaica South, when on their way home from market, found it impossible to get through the snow drifts on the Rockaway road near the residence of John Selover. They were obliged to abandon their wagons. Saturday and Monday a large force of men, under the direction of John J. McLaughlin and the highway commissioners were at work breaking the roads, the snow in many places being from eight to ten feet deep.

The dummy cars on Myrtle avenue, running between Richmond Hill and Ridgewood, were badly blocked. No cars were run until Saturday evening.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 15, 1895, p. 1.