The Year Without a Summer

No, not this year, though it has been a little cool and rainy in these parts, with a partial eclipse of the sun under way today.
Rather, "the year without a summer" refers to 1816, and was the subject of our speaker last week, Malta Town Historian (and Ballston Spa Rotarian) Paul Perreault.
Caused by the eruption of a volcano the year before, in what is now Indonesia, the ill omens locally began with a crop-damaging "dry fog" in the fall of 1815. (That volcano in the photo, Mount Tambora, blasted off a third of its height.) The next year, 1816, the snows and frosts never went away, and weather troubles around the world continued for the next few years, with disastrous results for the farm-based local economy.
In the absence of federal and state aid, Paul told us, the burden of assisting the destitute fell to local people, including the Town of Malta government, which massively increased the budget for the "overseer of the poor."