The rain and gloom are finally behind us and we’re all set for the start of a beautiful Androscoggin Valley summer. Let’s hope it’s better than what they had in 1816.

It was called “the year without a summer.”

According to accounts in my 1891 edition of “The History of Androscoggin County,” we don’t ever want to see the likes of that year again.

Settlements around the falls were flourishing right up to the beginning of the War of 1812. Coasting vessels brought many articles of necessity that could be purchased quite reasonably, but with the war and a shipping embargo came hard times.

“A stagnation occurred in all business,” the history book reported. “Many people sold their homes for a tithe (tenth) of their value to go to more promising lands. Small grain of all kinds was very scarce. The poorer settlers had much difficulty to get seed, and how to obtain bread was an unsolved and often unsolvable problem.”

Then came the brutal conditions of nature: A year without a growing season meant more extreme deprivation for early residents.

It’s not as if the settlers couldn’t handle a bit of adversity. In the previous decades, there had been a freshet in 1785 that took out all the bridges.

In 1791, there was “a great incursion of grasshoppers,” the historians said. “They ate the corn and potatoes to the ground, and in many fields, not one bushel of potatoes was raised.”

By 1802, the old book said, “crows were so numerous and destructive that one of the first acts of the new town of Minot was to vote a bounty of twelve and a half cents for each head.”

In 1815, snow fell in May to depths of a foot to 18 inches. The summer was normal, but the following December was very cold. January 1816 had some mild days and February was mild, too. The first half of March was cold and blustery, and then it turned mild again.

April commenced with warm weather, but it turned cold again – much like many springtimes in Maine.

However, conditions were far from normal from then on.

May was cold. “Corn was killed, replanted and again killed. Buds and fruits were frozen. Ice formed half an inch thick.”

June was even colder than May and snow fell to a depth of 10 inches.

The Rev. Ransom Dunham of Paris, as quoted by Dr. Lapham in “History of Norway,” said, “In 1816, June 7th, snow fell two inches. I rode from Hebron to Livermore on horseback and came near freezing. It was so cold it killed the birds. English robins were frozen to death.”

July brought still more snow and ice. More cold weather in August, with half-inch ice some nights.

“September, after the first two weeks, which were warm, was cold and frosty. October was colder than usual, with much ice and frost. November was cold with sleighing.”

Settlers of the area found the going tough right through the fall of 1817.

We may be impatient for beach days and complain about oil bills, but it’s nothing like the uncertainty of life that depends almost entirely on agriculture.

The summer of 2007 is coming, and not a day too soon.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].