Edward Cooney was City Historian for over forty years, president of the Herkimer County Historical Society, and one of the founding members of the Little Falls Historical Society.

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.

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.

I love Halloween. Always have. My earliest remembrance is dressing up in a cowboy outfit complete with flannel shirt, neckerchief, vest, chaps and the piece de resistance, a pearl-handled, silver Lone Ranger cap pistol.

I never thought about turning 80. Because I hadn’t. But now that I’m about to, I was asked by a friend if there was one word that could describe how I felt about becoming an octogenarian.