When Noon Turned to Night: The Mysterious Dark Day of 1780
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 19, 1780
On this day, dear readers, we find ourselves transported to a most peculiar and unsettling moment in New England's history. Imagine, if you will, a day so dark that it struck fear into the hearts of even the most stoic New Englanders, a day that would come to be known simply as The Dark Day.
Picture the scene: The sun rises as usual, painting the sky with its familiar hues. But as the clock strikes 10, an eerie darkness begins to descend. Can you fathom the confusion and alarm?
From Portland, Maine, to New Jersey, a blackout spreads like an ominous tide. Reports flood in of candle-lit lunches and people abandoning their daily tasks to pray fervently. Even the animal kingdom seems to sense the strangeness of the day.
Can you hear the chickens returning to their roosts, confused by this premature nightfall?
Can you see the barn animals seeking shelter, their instincts telling them something is amiss?
Such was the magnitude of this event that even General George Washington, the father of our nation, saw fit to record it in his diary. One can only imagine the thoughts that must have raced through his mind as he put quill to paper.
The nature poet John Greenleaf Whittier (books about this person), moved by the drama of the day, immortalized it in verse:
Twas on a May-day of the
far-old years
Seventeen hundred eighty,
that there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life
of the spring,
Over the fresh earth, and the
heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness.'
"Men prayed, and women
wept; all ears grew sharp
To hear the doom-blast of the
trumpet shatter
The black sky.
Can you feel the weight of that "horror of great darkness" settling over the land?
Can you hear the prayers and weeping, the sharp anticipation of divine judgment?
Yet, as we now know, this was not the Day of Judgment that so many feared.
Modern scholars believe the darkness stemmed from a fire out west, its smoke carried on the winds to blanket New England in shadow.
But the drama was not yet over!
Picture, if you will, the night that followed.
As if the day's darkness wasn't unsettling enough, New Englanders were treated to a sight that must have sent shivers down their spines - a full moon as red as blood set against the inky black sky.
Can you imagine the whispered conversations, the fearful glances skyward?
What omens did they read in that crimson orb?
As we tend our gardens on this May day, let us take a moment to reflect on that spring of 1780.
How different our world is now, with our understanding of meteorology and atmospheric phenomena.
Yet, perhaps a part of us can still connect with those long-ago New Englanders, reminded of the awesome and sometimes terrifying power of nature.
And who knows?
Perhaps on a particularly gloomy day, when the clouds hang low and the world seems unusually dark, we might feel a fleeting kinship with those who experienced The Dark Day, remembering that sometimes, history is written not in light, but in shadow.
