In December of 1868, Stephen Martin Saxby, a navigator in the British Navy and amateur astronomer, first wrote to a London newspaper warning of a storm that he predicted would hit the eastern seaboard of North America on October 4th or 5th, 1869. The storm did indeed arrive on the morning of October 4th, 1869, and over the next few days, as the storm traveled up the funnel shaped Bay of Fundy, the low lying areas of Albert County and surrounding counties would become severely flooded. The storm brought with it the highest tides ever recorded along the eastern seaboard, as well as high winds and heavy rain. Some areas received over 300mm of rain in one day.
In Hillsborough, the low lying marshlands below where the Salem & Hillsborough railway museum is now located, became a "lake" of sea water from the storm. The only Hillsborough parish casualty of the Saxby Gale was Miss Bray, shown here in a tintype, who drowned while driving in a horse and carriage attempting to cross this “lake”. on the way home from a dance. Other accounts told of barns, livestock, and houses being torn away, even turning up in trees once the flooding had receded.
These additional stories and depictions of this unprecedented storm are told through the museum’s Land and Sea exhibits, and albertcountymuseum.com.