0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: January 12, 1888, morning, a one room schoolhouse six miles south of Ord, Nebraska, 40 degrees in January, unseasonably warm. 0:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of morning where farm kids arrived without their heavy coats because it feels like spring decided to show up three months early. 0:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Many Freeman, 19 years old, is teaching her first real class, 13 students, ages 6 to 14. 0:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's Frankie Gibbon in the back row, not paying attention to arithmetic, because he's playing with something else, a ball of twine. 1:00 [SPEAKER_00]: She drops it in her desk drawer, problem solved. 1:06 [SPEAKER_00]: By afternoon, that confiscated ball of twine would be the only thing standing between those 13 children and death. 1:16 [SPEAKER_00]: because at that exact moment, 200 miles north, something was moving, an Arctic front racing south from Canada, 780 miles into 12 hours, hurricane force winds, temperatures that would drop 80 degrees in minutes. 1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: The deadliest blizzard in American history was about to strike. 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: and many Freeman had seconds to make a decision that would define the rest of her life. 1:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back, friend, to hometown history. 1:56 [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past, to uncover how local stories shaped the world. 2:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, and today we're exploring what happens. 2:09 [SPEAKER_00]: When a 19-year-old teacher, 13 children, and a ball of twine, faces the worst blizzard in American history. 2:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The morning continues at mid-fale school, spelling, reading. 2:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of ordinary that 19-year-old many Freeman had trained for at normal school. 2:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Making a difference, teaching children their letters and numbers. 2:39 [SPEAKER_00]: This is Frontier, Nebraska. 2:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Just 17 years after Custer's last stand, 2:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The schoolhouse is sod walls, tar paper roof, single room measuring maybe 16 by 20 feet. 2:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Simple wooden desks, a pop belly stove, struggling to heat the whole space, 13 students spanning 8 grades, 6-year-olds learning letters alongside 14-year-olds, working through long division. 3:13 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what teaching meant on the prairie. 3:17 [SPEAKER_00]: You handled it all alone. 3:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Many may Freeman is barely older than some of her students. 3:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Fresh from training, this is her first real job. 3:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Her first time being responsible for anything, this important. 3:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Simple, normal, the last normal day of her life. 3:41 [SPEAKER_00]: 200 miles north, something was building that meteorologist today still find hard to believe. 3:49 [SPEAKER_00]: An Arctic air mass, moving south at unprecedented speed, not drifting, racing. 3:57 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1888, there was no Doppler radar, no weather satellites, no way to see this monster coming, until it was 4:09 [SPEAKER_00]: The farmers, the townsfolk, they had no idea, neither did many Freeman and her 13 students. 4:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Around noon, folks noticed the temperature starting to drop, but it had been warm all morning, so a little cooling off seemed fine, maybe even refreshing. 4:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Then around 245 that afternoon, the sky turned to this weird, greenish black, the color of a bruise, and then all hell broke loose. 4:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The wind at the schoolhouse, like a living thing, 60, 70, maybe 80 miles an hour. 5:03 [SPEAKER_00]: snow started pouring in, not falling, pouring, or a zontal driven by the winds that would knock a full-grown man off his feet. 5:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The temperature was dropping so fast, you could feel it for the walls, 5:22 [SPEAKER_00]: From 40 degrees to well below zero, the windshield, historians believe, probably hit negative 40, maybe negative 50, and then the roof started tearing away. 5:38 [SPEAKER_00]: That tar paper and sawed roof that was supposed to keep them safe, the wind peeled it back, like you'd peeled a lid off a can. 5:49 [SPEAKER_00]: 13 children, a youngest with six years old, and they were all looking at many Freeman, their 19-year-old teacher, to tell them what to do. 6:02 [SPEAKER_00]: All across the plains that afternoon, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, hundreds of school teachers were facing this exact same situation. 6:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Some stayed, tried to huddle with their students around their stoves and waited out. 6:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Many of those teachers and students froze to death right 6:29 [SPEAKER_00]: some teachers sent the children home, their parents would be worried. 6:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But the kids knew their own way. 6:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Those children walked into the wide out, alone. 6:42 [SPEAKER_00]: 12-year-olds, eight-year-olds, six-year-olds. 6:48 [SPEAKER_00]: They made it maybe 50 yards before becoming disoriented, wondering in circles, lying down at the snow. 6:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Farmers died that day, walking from their houses to their barns, to one of feet away. 7:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't find their way back, froze to death, within sight of safety. 7:14 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time this blizzard ended, 235 people would be dead across the Great Plains. 7:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Over a hundred of them were children. 7:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment of chaos, roof tearing away, children screaming, snow blasting through the open door, many Freeman remembered the ball of twine. 7:40 [SPEAKER_00]: She opened her desk drawer and pulled out that ball of twine, the one she'd confiscated from Frankie Gibbon, just hours earlier, and somewhere in her racing mind, she had a plan 7:56 [SPEAKER_00]: If we're going out there, we cannot get separated. 8:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Even if one child wanders away and that white out, I'll never find them. 8:06 [SPEAKER_00]: They'll die alone in the snow. 8:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So she starts tying them together, one by one. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Frankie Given, whose confiscated twine was now nodded around his waist. 8:20 [SPEAKER_00]: The oldest students spaced along the line. 8:24 [SPEAKER_00]: the youngest in the middle where they'd be most protected, about three feet of twine between each child, and many Freeman tied the end around her own waist. 8:38 [SPEAKER_00]: 19 years old, first year teaching, she took one last look at what was left of her school 8:53 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't see anything, not the sky, not the ground, not your hand in front of your face, just white, everywhere, blinding, white. 9:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't hear anything except the wind, it's so loud, it's like standing inside a jet engine, the children are crying, shouting that you can't hear them. 9:21 [SPEAKER_00]: You just feel the twine pulling, tugging, reminding you they're still there. 9:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The cold burns your lungs with every breath. 9:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The snow flies horizontally, like needles against your face. 9:38 [SPEAKER_00]: In many new, she had to know that these children were dressed for 40 degree weather, not this. 9:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Many Freeman was navigating by memory, by instinct, by prayer. 9:56 [SPEAKER_00]: She thought she knew where the farmhouse was, eighty yards, maybe a hundred. 10:03 [SPEAKER_00]: She walked past it dozens of times, but in that white hell with no landmarks visible, no fence posts to follow, no sense of direction at all. 10:19 [SPEAKER_00]: the children were falling. 10:22 [SPEAKER_00]: She could feel it through the twine. 10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Sudden tugs as someone went down. 10:28 [SPEAKER_00]: They'd cry out and she'd stop. 10:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Wait for them to be pulled to their feet by the others, then push forward again. 10:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Every step she was thinking, am I going the right direction? 10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Have I walked past the farmhouse? 10:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Are we walking in circles? 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Am I killing these children? 10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And then her hand hit something solid. 10:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Wood, a wall, the farmhouse. 11:04 [SPEAKER_00]: All 13 children stumbled inside. 11:08 [SPEAKER_00]: every single one of them alive. 11:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Not everyone that day was so fortunate. 11:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The storm they just survived, it came to be called the school children's Blizzard, because so many of the victims were children. 11:26 [SPEAKER_00]: 235 people dead across the Great Plains. 11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: From the Canadian border down to Kansas, 11:37 [SPEAKER_00]: over a hundred of them were school children. 11:41 [SPEAKER_00]: At one school, the teacher tried to lead her students to safety. 11:46 [SPEAKER_00]: She made it ten feet from the school house before they became disoriented. 11:52 [SPEAKER_00]: When they were found, all but two of the children are dead. 11:58 [SPEAKER_00]: At another school, the teacher kept the students inside. 12:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They burned all the furniture, 12:07 [SPEAKER_00]: In the morning, when the storm cleared, three children were dead, from the cold. 12:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Mother's died trying to retrieve their children from school. 12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Entire families froze their slaves, trying to outrun the storm. 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So what made the difference, why did many students live, and so many others died? 12:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, absolutely. 12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Without that ball of confiscated twine, those children would have scattered in the wide out. 12:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Was it timing? 12:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe. 12:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Many made her move early when the children still had some strength. 12:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Was it luck? 12:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of it. 12:59 [SPEAKER_00]: That she found the farmhouse that the distance was just 13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: but it was something else too. 13:08 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a 19-year-old woman making a decision in the worst moment of her life and making it right. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Word spread fast. 13:20 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time the storm cleared, people were already talking about the miracle at mid-ville school. 13:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Within a week the story had made it to regional 13:36 [SPEAKER_00]: By late January 1888, Minnie Freeman was a national celebrity. 13:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The heroine of the Blizzard, Nebraska's Fearless Made, a songwriter published a piece called 13 Were Saved, or Nebraska's Fearless Made. 13:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It sold over a million copies of Sheet Music 14:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, the marriage proposals started coming. 14:04 [SPEAKER_00]: 80 of them. 14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: From strangers who'd never met her, proposing marriage based on newspaper accounts of her heroism. 14:16 [SPEAKER_00]: On March 15, 1888, the Nebraska State Board of Education presented many with a gold medal. 14:25 [SPEAKER_00]: and many stood there barely 20 years old, and said I only did my duty, and too much has already been set about it. 14:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Simple duty. 14:38 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what she called it. 14:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1889, many married Edgar Penny, a local farmer, not one of the 80 strangers who'd proposed. 14:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone she knew, someone she chosen, 14:55 [SPEAKER_00]: She kept teaching. 14:57 [SPEAKER_00]: She became active in the women's suffrage movement. 15:01 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1911, she spoke at the Nebraska Women's suffrage convention. 15:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Using that fame, she never wanted to advocate for the things she believed in. 15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Many Freeman Penny lived until 1943, 74 years old. 15:26 [SPEAKER_00]: If you walk into the Nebraska State Capital today, you'll find a Venetian Blast mural, installed in 1928. 15:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It shows a young woman leading a line of children through a blizzard. 15:40 [SPEAKER_00]: You can see the twine connecting them. 15:43 [SPEAKER_00]: You can see the determination on her face. 15:47 [SPEAKER_00]: That's mini. 15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Because here's what I keep coming back to. 15:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It's about the ball of twine, yes? 15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The random thing that saves you, the annoying distraction that becomes salvation. 16:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But mostly, I think it's about what Minnie herself kept saying. 16:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Simple duty. 16:12 [SPEAKER_00]: She insisted there was no difference between heroism and duty. 16:17 [SPEAKER_00]: that she just done what any teacher would do, but not every teacher that day made the choices many made. 16:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Not every adult in a crisis acts with that kind of clarity. 16:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe heroism is just duty done perfectly. 16:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Under impossible circumstances, by someone who refuses to let fear 16:43 [SPEAKER_00]: 13 children, one ball of twine, one nineteen year old, who made the right call, and because of that, those 13 children lived to have families of their own. 16:58 [SPEAKER_00]: to tell their grandchildren about the teacher who saved them, to pass down the story of the day the Blizzard came, and Miss Freeman said, old tight to the rope. 17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the story of many Freeman, Nebraska's fearless maid, who saved 13 lives with confiscated twine and stubborn courage. 17:24 [SPEAKER_00]: If you found the story as moving as I did, share it with someone who loves tales of ordinary people, doing extraordinary things. 17:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story. 17:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Tonight it's the lifeline that held when everything else fell apart. 17:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Good night friend.
Show full transcript (148 segments)
