Who started ground hogs day?

Answer 1

The History Channel website has a "This Day is History" feature that allows you to see several important events that occurred on any given day. According to History, February 2, 1887 was the first Groundhog day. It builds on a Christian tradition long before that of clergy members distributing candles before winter that supposedly represented how long and cold the winter would be. The Germans later decided to designate a hedgehog as a weather predicting animal. Hedgehogs were later swapped for groundhogs in the United States by Germans in Pennsylvania. The first ( and still considered as one of the "gold standards") groundhogs used is Punxsutawney Phil.

The National Centers for Environmental Information (part of NOAA) adds to the Punxsutawney Phil history by naming Clymer H. Freas as the journalist responsible for declaring Phil as the official groundhog. Freas belonged to a group of groundhog hunters that he named the "Punxsutawney Groundhog Club". Freas wrote about the holiday in his newspaper and interest eventually spread to other newspapers throughout the country.

Answer 2

Before folks could afford ground hogs (joke) a wide variety of animals that snooze the winter away were used to forecast the coming of spring - bears ,badgers and others. As you might imagine being close to a grumpy hungry bear and looking like food was not a good plan. So a smaller, less dangerous, animal was used in North America. The tradition continues with the new critter although it was a continuation of the older European custom.