Recently I was talking with a genealogical colleague about doing a talk about natural phenomena and their effects on families and communities. He brought up the subject of the Year Without a Summer and its impact on his ancestors who had migrated to North America.
I do
mention the event in some of my talks. I covered it in my book, Surviving
Mother Nature’s Tests. But I have not paid a lot more attention to it in
terms of how it affected various localities.
Maybe
because of the more recent date of the event, at least in terms of human
history, there is a great deal of information in books, articles, scientific
studies and newspapers. Much of this material was produced by and for local
consumption and thus has value in looking at people and communities where our
ancestors lived and worked. The Year Without a Summer, of course, has to deal
with the impact the 1816 Tambora eruption had on weather and climate around the
world.
I commented
about the event in my book:
What was to
affect the entire globe, though, was a cloud of ash and gases rising into the
stratosphere containing deadly sulphur dioxide which, when combined with water produced
sulphuric acid (H2SO4) – 100 million tons of it! Jet
streams began blowing the cloud to the west. Within two weeks it had surrounded
the world at the equator; by July it had spread north and south to reach the
poles. The Earth was blanketed by a shadowy, poisonous veil of
gas. With cold air trapped beneath the volcanic plumes, clouds could not form,
thus rain could not fall to wash the pollution away. It took many years for the
sulphur particles to finally drop back to the Earth.
In the
meantime, the shroud caused havoc with climatic conditions: sunlight was
reflected back into space; temperatures at the surface were cooled, and weather
patterns were completely disrupted. The year following the Tambora eruption has been called the “Year Without
Summer” because in most parts of the world in 1815, conditions were wet, cold
and just plain miserable!
There is
evidence in many records illustrating the effects on local communities. Eastern
Canada and northeast USA experienced highly unusual weather and winter-like
conditions in the spring of 1816 that were widely reported in newspapers and
diaries. Later studies and reports offered data and comments about the effects
of the ash cloud.
Can you
find any references to this event in newspapers or other records in the areas
where your ancestors lived?
New York Evening Post, Thursday, June 27, 1816 (Newspapers.com): various reports from NE United States
![]() |
The Franklin Repository, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 25 June 1816 (Newspapers.com) |
Montreal Gazette, Montreal, Quebec,
Canada 10 June 1816 (Ancestry.com)
You can
read more about the event and its repercussions in many books and articles, and
on several websites. For Canadian experiences, read:
Canada’s
History: 1816: The Year Without Summer https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/environment/1816-the-year-without-summer
Canada’s
History: The Big Chill https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/environment/the-big-chill
Canadian
History Ehx: Canada’s Year Without a Summer https://canadaehx.com/2020/07/11/canadas-year-without-a-summer/
Reader’s
Digest: The Year Canada Didn’t Have a Summer https://www.readersdigest.ca/culture/1816-the-year-without-a-summer/
For Northeastern
American experiences, read:
Discover
Concord: Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death: The Year Without a Summer https://www.discoverconcordma.com/articles/291-eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death-the-year-without-a-summer
Historic
Ipswich: 1816, the Year Without Summer https://historicipswich.net/2020/06/25/1816-the-year-without-summer/
NASA: The
year without a summer https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/183/the-year-without-a-summer/
US National
Parks Service: 1816 – The Year Without Summer https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/1816-the-year-without-summer.htm
USGS: New
England’s 1816 “Mackerel Year,” Volcanoes and Climate Change Today https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/new-englands-1816-mackerel-year-volcanoes-and-climate-change-today
The Beehive
– Massachusetts Historical Society: 1816: the Year Without a Summer https://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2016/11/1815-the-year-without-a-summer/
For European
experiences and explanations, read:
Andrew P
Schurer et al. (2019). Disentangling the causes of the 1816 European year
without a summer. Environmental Research Letters. 14(9). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3a10
For general
data:
Klingaman,
W. K. & Klingaman, N. P. (2013). The Year Without Summer. New York:
St. Martin’s Press. 352 pp.
Do an
Internet search for “year without a summer” for many more references to the
eruption and its effects around the world in articles, books, blogs,
newspapers, journals, etc.