Deathly South Dakota Blizzard

An amazing book I'd like to suggest is The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin. The subject is the Friday, January 13, 1888 blizzard ocurring on the Dakota-Nebraska prairie. I know that one of our Pepper relatives, Hattie Minthorn Pepper, was a schoolteacher during the blizzard. I have a copy of her memoirs of that day. Luckily none of her students died, but over 500 people froze, 100 of them children. Hattie was the niece of my 2nd ggrandmother Martha Pepper Daugherty. Hattie Daugherty Place also taught school. Hattie is a name found quite a bit in the Daugherty/Pepper family, making for some confusion.

Catherine Elizabeth DeLong Daugherty's father, Peter DeLong was born in Canada 1838...not too far from Toronto. For some reason he came to SD after George married Catherine, and purchased some land. I need to search my records to find out what details there are concerning that land purchase. The DeLongs and Daughertys met through Peter's son Edward. I don't know where Catherine's mother, Suzanna was...whether or not she also lived briefly in SD. I do know she died in the Pacific NW. That's another Blog subject.

Anyway, Aunt Beulah always said that her ggrandfather, Peter, disappeared in a blizzard outside of Bonilla, SD. It's a possibility that it could have been 1888. We have no records of his death. Our DeLong family in Canada haven't any idea what became of him. Peter is a mystery. I can't help but picture the snowy vicious winds that he must have endured those last few hours of his life. The trees that the homesteader planted couldn't have been very mature at that time to make any kind of windbreak. A grisly thought is, what happened to his body?

One addition: Peter is a common name in the DeLong family. The Peter mentioned above had a father named Peter who is buried in Whitby, Ontario.