Mt. Washington Diary Presented to Library

HE approached me in Representatives Hall at Concord late in the 1959 session, acting strikingly different from most strangers. He was no lobbyist looking for a vote, no solon seeking a trade, and no constituent requesting information. Instead, he had something to give outright and with no strings attached.

He introduced himself as Morris T. Clement, native of Warren, N. H., and long since retired in Concord. Mr. Clement reminisced about the ten summers he spent operating the Moosilauke Summit House soon after the turn of the century with the help of his sister and the company of "Blossom" - a different cow each summer but always with the same name.

Mr. Clement explained that he is a descendant of William Little, Dartmouth 1859, original proprietor of the summit hostelry, who allowed its use in the winter of 1870 by a small expedition organized by Prof. Charles F. Hitchcock of Dartmouth in his first year as State Geologist. The professor described this adventure in the first chapter of MountWashington in Winter, because the Moosilauke operation was deliberately under taken to prepare for the following winter atop New Hampshire's highest peak. My visitor produced a slightly-worn, leather-bound notebook titled "Journal of Events Whilst on the Mountain, 1870." In legible ink script, the writer (Amos Clough, Warren photographer) reports how on December 31, 1869, "I got my traps in order and started for the mountain." After 161 pages of factual but dramatic description of two winter months on Moosilauke, the journalist concludes, "Whether we are remembered or forgotten will make but little difference. We have proved that man can live high up in winter's storms and that the storms are storms that do justice to the name." Amos Clough and his partners will not be forgotten, partly because his own hand-written journal is now preserved for posterity in the White Mountain Collection at Baker Library. Although substantial parts are reprinted in the History ofWarren, authored by the same William Little so long associated with Mount Moosilauke, the original, unedited diary is now a prized Baker Library possession.