In the 30s, it was warming. Also, in the early 60s, I experienced extreme heat in eastern NC.

In the late 1800s, it was cooling. In an area that rarely gets more than a dusting, my great-grandmother said that it snowed enough when she was a little girl that when they rode in the wagon to town to get supplies, the horse's stomach was dragging in the snow. This was in the 1890s in eastern NC.