What did wealthy people do with their money? Some spent lavishly on themselves and their families caring little for their fellow man; others were philanthropic. Over the years, the citizens of Little Falls have greatly benefited in many different ways from the philanthropy of several of its leading residents who lived here in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Dutch explorer Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert left Fort Orange (Albany), and passed around the little falls, possibly south of Fall Hill, while visiting Iroquois Indian villages on his way to Oneida Lake. Most likely, he was the first white person to have visited this area.
On December 29, 1910, Judge Rollin Smith has bequeathed his beautiful residence, at the corner of West Main Street and Waverly Place, to the community for a public library. The property itself is one of the finest in the city, and for that matter in the county.
Decades before there was a Pine Ridge ski center in Salisbury or a Shu-maker Mountain ski area outside Little Falls, generations of Little Falls winter sports enthusiasts skied and sledded down the vertical drops that typify our steep, narrow Mohawk Valley topography.
On December 17, 1917, Cooney Archives, a good number of recently built US submarine chasers, moving down the canal, stopped in Little Falls on their way to New York City. They will bolster our shore defenses.
In 1892, the Little Falls- Dolgeville Railroad Company became incorporated, with the company’s main shareholder being Alfred Dolge.
As the holidays are upon us, the Little Falls Historical Society would like you to consider giving loved ones and friends copies of the great book BEYOND OUR BICENTENNIAL as Christmas gifts.
The Little Falls Historical Museum would like to honor all US Military Veterans for Veteran’s Day, November 11, 2022.
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.
St. Mary’s Parish (now Holy Family Parish) had a new priest, and this was his first assignment out of the seminary. He was young, he was friendly, he had an easy smile, most of the girls liked him because he was good looking, and the boys liked him because if there was a basketball game going on, he liked to take off his collar and join the game.