Manchester City Library

The New Hampshire Room will be closed from 1:30pm to 3:30pm. You may make materials requests at the information desk.

The NH Room will be closed from 1:30pm to 3:30pm today.  It will reopen from 3:30pm to 5:30pm.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

The photos, news, and now confirmation of the tornadoes that visited NH yesterday got me wondering if they had been here before. I asked around and no one in the Library recalled there having been a tornado in their memory. It turns out that our memories are either too short or just not that good (maybe both!). From the May 1959 issue of New Hampshire Profiles, we found an account of September of 1821:

…In the northwest, a black, brassy cloud was moving slowly toward Croydon and Cornish. Hanging down out from its under side was a dark cylinder that resembled a great elephant’s trunk let down from heaven.

Suddenly the wind shifted violently to the north, and in a few minutes two of the True’s children lay buried under chimney bricks, Mr. Flanders was standing paralyzed on his cellar stairs, and the Huntoom baby was thrown into Lake Sunapee.

New Hampshire’s vicious tornado had struck.

Mr. Fred W. Lamb of the NH Historical Society wrote The Great Tornado of 1821 in New Hampshire giving a different description of the same storm. It seems to be the largest, but not the only NH tornado by any stretch. The NH Department of Safety reports an average of two tornado touchdowns a year. Despite the surprising frequency, yesterday’s tornado fatality was only the fifth in the state’s history.

Cynthia O’Neil, our accomplished genealogy and local history expert, answered my curiosity with a stack of newspaper clippings from the New Hampshire Room. I bet she’d do the same for you, if you’re interested in more.