BUFFALO, N. Y.,---
SEPTEMBER 22, 1938

Mr. Homer Blizzard,
Charleston, West Virginia

Dear Sir:

Re: The Blizzard Family

To acknowledge receipt of and thank you for your letter, I can well understand your interest, due to the fact in earlier years my business caused necessary travel over most of this country, Canada and Mexico, and as you state, the Blizzard are far and few between.

It is my opinion, based on the fact that most of them are found in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and a few in West Virginia, undoubtedly, as you state, there is some relationship, even though far removed from definite ties as of today.

I question very much that your forbears were Scotch, and I will venture to say they came from Sussex, in England, but at the same time will grant you they did at that time, being seafaring people, intermarry with the Scotch.

Aside from the subject, one must remember that all men like to "have their faces saved", prestige and pride is with us all, even to the ditch digger, and the quicker our leaders learn that simple lesson, the faster we will, in my opinion, eliminate misunderstanding in industry at least. The Blizzards, as far as I can learn, know that lesson, and while none have been - shall we say genius’s - they have been men with many faults, hard, honest as a whole but very domineering and frankly, hard to live with.

In the year 1681, William Penn sailed from England with a grant of land; the ship was the "Welcome", the Captain, Treadwell, but the first mate (he was the navigator) was John Thomas Blizzard, his wife was Mary; they had six sons and one daughter. I believe the Frederick Blizzard you mention was a grandson of John Thomas Blizzard.

Well, the first day they landed at what is now Burlington, New Jersey. The water being bad, they dropped back down the Delaware River to what is now Philadelphia, so you see, Burlington is really one day older than Philadelphia.

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Penn settled his colony, traded with the Indians, and had so-called religious freedom. Now, the Blizzards had been sea rovers from Sussex, and they did not take to living on land and, from all reports, old John Thomas Blizzard was a hard man to live with, in fact, he got so bad Penn called him in, and told him, "John Thomas, you did a good job bringing us here, but you are so disagreeable that we have decided you and yours must leave this colony. You can go back to Sussex, or you can take land below--make up your mind." John Thomas replied he would take the land, and at that, Penn opened a rough map and drew a line across what is now the lower part of Delaware, and said, "That is for you and yours", and John Thomas set out, and that part of Delaware that is now Sussex County, was theirs. He settled at what is now near Georgetown, Delaware, and prospered; he was hard, selfish, but very honest in his tradings with the Indians, and built up a large family; most of them have remained in a close radius of that point.

As time went on, there was a period of slave trading, and the Blizzards have not too much to be proud of in that line. They build the fastest sailers, and landed their negroes at what is now Lewis, Delaware, a quaint old town on Delaware Bay, and the ocean adjacent, and sold them on the slave block by the hundreds. As generations came and died, the land was sold. Mostly they were sailors and farmers, and at times distillers of no mean peach and apple brandies. Their product was even known in England Seventeen Hundreds.

The original home was built of field stone, which I now own, and on it is the original burying ground in which I shall be buried, and that is all that is left of the original tract of a whole county. It is in that county that you will find them by the dozens – cousins, uncles, aunts and as far removed as sixth cousins - all as I say, workers, honest, bull-headed, selfish and in many cases very narrow, but all MEN, neither afraid of the Sea, or anything on earth, and never has one been known to ask a favor or charity.

There is, as you say, once in a while one that strays. As an instance, one is Secretary of the Cincinnati Trust. Many are brokers in Philadelphia, some lawyers, and some doctors, but even today they are mostly farmers and sailors, and so am I at heart, even though I happen through fate to be in a very technical business. My heart is in my boats, farms and Delaware. In fact, the only reason I live with City Slickers is to make money to help keep some of the Blizzards.

I have never known a Blizzard to do much to be ashamed of, and at the same time, I never knew one to throw much away for anyone's good but their own. At the same time and by the same token, I have never known one that does not honor his obligations. Many of them are ship owners, never the large lines, but good substantial boats and well handled crews. There is never mutiny or what-have-you on our boats.

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We pay honest dollars, and by the Gods, we get the work or know why, pronto, and so it is in our plant with hundreds of men. We want no trouble, but we are no charity people. We want work received for the highest wages paid in our line and demand the best men, and we get them. I have never known men to love a Blizzard, BUT all men will trust a Blizzard and respect them, especially when the going is hard.

You have probably read of yesterday's storm floating around the Eastern seaboard. Well, on Lake Ontario there was a boat that had to go out; it didn't have to come back, but it had to go out. My business is helping run this, the largest plant of its kind in the world - BUT no one could move the boat. It was mine, and by the Gods, yesterday at 11 a.m., we went to Ontario and the boat moved out, and we brought her in at Olcott, with the Coast Guards refusing to believe a boat could live.

Now, I certainly didn't have to move that small $5,000.00 investment. You can argue it was silly, but neither could my men know I didn't like the job. That very pride which has hurt the Blizzards many times in the past made me "show them"! Three times I thought we were sinking, and each time we came up and over those hurricane waves, and today that boat is moving to Detroit. Here I sit laughing and penning another Blizzard to tell you what fools we are--MEN, everyone of them I have ever known, and many of them poor specimens when drinking too much for too many years. They are great family people, usually say little, but think and act very fast when necessary, even though in the wrong direction. There are none to be particularly proud of, but there are none to be particularly ashamed of at any time.

Most of the males run six feet and over; the females are usually good sized women, with few exceptions, even though marriage and different branches would tend to change them. It is believed, as a whole, they have changed but little since the days of William the Conqueror.

As old Governor Ponder used to say, "Just a bunch of people who fight between themselves, but let a stranger open his mouth and he signs his own death warrant." He always said, according to Grandpop, that with fifty Blizzards, he-would give Hell a run for its money. Their women are usually good, sensible hard workers and all live to an old age. I have known few that die under eighty.

There is in Sussex, England, in the small parish church, where for hundreds of years all records were registered, a history of the clan. A few years ago a friend there in England told me their history, and it was one of sailing, fishing and farming, even as it mostly is today with those I know best. They gave good service to England, and at Blizzard Castle in Sussex, which was given them for services in the Fifteen Hundreds. There are none left but well remembered, as markers in the graveyard show. Their history, I am told, was very hard, but was honest and clean.

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There is little can be said for myself. I am just a Superintendent in this great plant. I am fifty years of age, with a wife, a married daughter, with one grandchild with a Thousand to each that follows the day they are born. I live here in the winter, and at the lake in summer, where I can get alone and away from telephones and people. I like people but after talking to them by the dozens all day—living life different, mostly minute from minute, I am always willing to look over the water at night and see NOTHING.

My name is not Homer, but I do have a third or fourth cousin in Philadelphia with the same name. I think he is a ship owner and a broker. I have not seen him in fifteen years, and I am in Philadelphia at least once a month by changing trains for another plant we have below there. But you will find them and the original clan in Delaware, in Sussex County, and many folks think them sort of "queer". Maybe, we are! Who knows? If the rest of this troubled world is right, then it is my opinion the Blizzards that I know are very "queer", so that makes it all even--eh, what? Why, to sit and watch people's little minds squirm in their little orbits is really at times most painful--and yet, who is a Blizzard to question anyone at any time, but they all do. I hope you have not thought me too facetious, but we all do love life for life itself, and they all do just about as they darned well please--stubborn--mean--selfish--but honest, faithful and very capable of thinking for themselves.

I am not at all sure any of this will make you feel better, but it should not make you feel worse. It may be of no help. I simply answer as the thoughts occurred to me, and let you have it right straight. You know there are fake companies selling coats of arms. A true Blizzard would not give a whoop for such gadgets. However, if you are a Blizzard, and will show me your feet, I can prove you are, and I assure you that you have an honest coat of arms in England, it was earned by hard men under most unfavorable circumstances. Show me any baby just born, and I will tell you in a second if it is a Blizzard. No matter how far removed they are just as plainly marked as a Wilkes horse that came from the one original English stallion of that name. If your toe next to your large one protrudes further than the large toe, and the next toe recedes a distance equal to the length, of the first joint of that toe back of the toe next to the large one, then you are from our clan; if they don't then you are most certainly not. There has never for 280 years been male or female born in the clan that does not have that marking--believe it or not, the courts accepted that as evidence in fixing the blame for two bastards in 1789, at Dover, and we Blizzards are not telling Ripley that one--let it lay.

I thank you, and hope you have had at least a couple of chuckles, and am telling you only what has been passed along to me.