“The heavens were on fire,” was how one Windhamite described the night of Nov. 13, 1833.

On that night, a meteor shower or storm occurred over the entire North America and according to some estimates, more than 100,000 meteors fell per hour – and the storm lasted nine hours.

Windham’s Jonathan Loveitt kept a diary and was most concerned with recording the weather, and wrote, “Nov. 13, 1833, the stars fell as thick as they was in the skye.” Large meteors and small, darted across the skies, in a variety of colors.

Many residents at the time were superstitious and terrified at this event; some thought the world had come to an end. Fearing the Day of Judgment was at hand, some people simply left their chores and went to bed!

The 1833 event, well recognized by most people nowadays, was the Leonids meteor shower which some say occurs every 33 years, according to some authorities.

Loveitt also recorded two earthquakes: “Feb. 22, 1807, “there was an earthquake at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.” and again, on “Nov. 28, 1814, at half past seven o’clock in the evening there was a very heavy shock of an earthquake from S.W. to N.E.”

Research note: Jonathan Loveitt (1743-1819) came to Windham in 1769 when he was 26 and ran a lumbering business at Gambo Falls, where he also had a grocery store; he later purchased the waterfall named for him and ran a sawmill with some of his sons. He and his wife had 13 children. Since Loveitt had died before the 1833 meteor shower, perhaps his son, Jonathan Jr. also kept a diary. Windham Historical Society has some of Loveitt’s old store ledgers in its collection.

Jonathan Loveitt, who recorded the Leonid meteor shower in 1833 as well as some other natural phenomena, lived in this house on Webb Road.