The summer of 1882 was a bad time to be an inhabitant of Little Falls as sickness and death raged throughout the village. In those few months, an estimated sixty people died, with hundreds more sickened – over half of the deaths were of infants and adolescents. Cholera, typhoid fever and “brain congestion”, at the time often lumped together as “malarial disease”, were the culprits. Victims of cholera suffered severe cases of diarrhea and subsequent dehydration, with death sometimes occurring within hours or a few days from the onset of symptoms.