What would be one of the worst snowstorms recorded in Virginia’s history began on Sunday, January 17, 1857. Edmund Ruffin, the noted proponent of slavery and states’ rights who had a plantation along the James River outside of Petersburg, noted in his diary “snow with strong wind & bitter cold.” The thermometer plunged to 3°F by 4 p.m. and a violent north wind drove the snow into deep drifts. “We could scarcely keep comfortably warm sitting by the fire,” he wrote, noting that he went to bed covered with six blankets, with two more over his feet, woolen night socks, and a woolen wrapper and still awoke freezing cold when the fire went out. (He solved that problem on subsequent nights by having one of his enslaved servants sit up all night to keep the fire burning.)
That evening, Dr. Joseph Cox, an esteemed local physician, and a friend were returning from visiting a patient in Petersburg. Unable to make it home in the storm, Cox headed for Clover Hill, the plantation of his brother, Judge James Cox, but his buggy got trapped in a snowdrift, some of which were later estimated at seven feet deep. Cox, and the horse pulling his buggy, froze to death a mere 700 yards from the entrance to Clover Hill. According to some accounts, his passenger, a Mr. Traylor, also perished, while others say he was severely frostbitten but survived what was thereafter known as “Cox’s Snow.”
The storm shut down Central Virginia for more than a week, an occurrence that was met with as much incredulity as being trapped for a day on I-95 in the twenty-first century. “Such a snow storm I have never known before,” wrote Ruffin, noting that “there has been a general cessation of labor & business.” Walking or riding in the drifts was nearly impossible and mail and passenger trains remained mired in snow. “Such obstruction to traveling, even for a day, I have never heard before, in this region,” he wrote, noting that few people in Virginia bothered to keep sleighs but that the James was frozen solid enough to walk on.