Spring opened very early in the year 1873. Farmers plowed and harrowed the ground and sowed their oats and spring wheat in February and March. The grass began to grow early in April and by the middle of the month the small-grain fields were bright green with the new crops. Most of the settlers on the uplands of Jefferson county were still living in dugouts or sod houses. The stables and barns for the protection of their live stock were for the most part built by setting forked posts in the ground, putting rough poles and brush against the sides and on the roof, and covering them with straw, prairie grass, or manure. Sometimes the bank of a ravine was made perpendicular and used as one side. The covering of the walls and roof of these structures needed continual renewal as the winds loosened it or as the spring rains caused it to settle. Settlers became careless about this early in the spring, thinking that the winter was over. The prairies were still bare of hedges, fences, or trees to break the winds or catch the drifting snow. Easter Sunday occurred on the thirteenth of April. For days before, the weather had been mild and the air delightful. The writer was then living alone in a dugout seven miles north of Fairbury in what is now the rich and fertile farming community known as Bower. The granary stood on the edge of a ravine a short distance from the dugout. The stable or barn was partly dug into the bank of this ravine; the long side was to the north, while the roof and the south side were built of poles and straw in the usual fashion of those days. On the afternoon of Easter Sunday it began to rain and blow from the northwest. The next morning I had been awake for some time waiting for daylight when I finally realized that the dim light coming from the windows was due to the fact that they were covered with snow drifts. I could hear the noise of the wind but had no idea of the fury of the tempest until I undertook to go outside to feed the stock. As soon as I opened the door I found that the air was full of snow, driven by a tremendous gale from the north. The fury of the tempest was indescribable. The air appeared to be a mass of moving snow, and the wind howled like a pack of furies. I managed to get to the granary for some oats, but on looking into the ravine no stable was to be seen, only an immense snow drift which almost filled it. At the point where the door to the stable should have been there appeared a hole in the drift where the snow was eddying. On crawling into this I found that during the night the snow had drifted in around the horses and cattle, which were tied to the manger. The animals had trampled it under their feet to such an extent that it had raised them so that in places their backs lifted the flimsy roof, and the wind carrying much of the covering away, had filled the stable with snow until some of them were almost and others wholly buried, except where the remains of the roof protected them.