Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Am I the only one who knows what’s cool about local history? Seriously.

Every time I see something written about our local communities, it’s all about the plain facts. When it was founded and by whom, local industries, and so on. “Lock Haven was founded in 1833 by Jeremiah Church. It is on the west branch of the Susquehanna River. It was founded as a borough, but is now a city.” It’s always dry and factual.

Nobody ever mentions weird and interesting incidents until I get around to writing about them.
Such as a field that was badly attacked by worms in Mill Hall.

Mill Hall, by the way, was founded by Nathan Harvey and incorporated as a village in 1806, part of Bald Eagle Township. In case you prefer the dry and factual history pieces, in which case, my column may not be the right reading material for you.

J.D.L. Smith, a local farmer, had planted all his fields along the canal in the summer of 1845. As his oats reached maturity, he discovered that they were being attacked by army worms, an ugly little species of worm that can cause a lot of damage. (I had to go look that up. I’m not a worm specialist.) He watched as they crept across the field and destroyed all the oats, a little at a time. Oddly, his was the only field attacked by the worms, and nobody ever figured out why.

John Blair Linn’s book “History of Centre and Clinton Counties” mentions the incident, saying that the worms “proceeded to devour every blade of grain with a greediness and voracity that knew no bounds.” They took out the entire oat field, to Smith’s dismay. (This would make a really interesting B-movie.)

Next was the corn, and the worms were heading for that field. Smith couldn’t just stand aside and let them destroy all his crops, and frankly, I wouldn’t so much mind not getting oats myself, but I do really like corn. Apparently Smith felt the same way, so he took action and dug a long ditch between the fields. This was his plan to stop the worms.

And it worked. Tons of worms plunged into the ditch, trapped there and unable to move on to the cornfield—Linn described it as “Wriggling, crawling masses.” (Good luck getting that visual out of your head now.) Smith then threw straw into the ditch, covering them up, and burned the straw, killing all of the worms. This was the end of their “mad career,” as the book puts it. “It is said that millions and millions of them were thus destroyed,” said Linn’s History.

The book refers to the incident as a “phenomenon,” and notes that no further damage was done. “Strange as it may appear, no other farm in the vicinity was visited by the army worms that season,” said Linn’s History.
It’s a weird story, but if it got included in the most reliable history book about Clinton County, it’s probably worth mentioning. It’s on page 572; go and check. And I may be the only Clinton County historian to get an entire newspaper column out of worms.