“Bad luck never lost a race.”- Mark Getty

The reasons hundreds of thousands of nineteenth century emigrants took the arduous journey to the west coast were many. For most the decisions involved obtaining better living circumstances, amassing wealth, or even the adventure of moving to a new location.

For Luke Halloran, relocation was a matter of life and death. Luke was a twenty-four of twenty-five-year-old Irish immigrant living in St. Louis. He had prospered running a successful store and amassing a half dozen properties in the city.  The future looked bright for the young man, and it is unlikely that selling everything and heading west was the future he envisioned.

The decision for his is journey West likely started with a persistent cough, fever, difficulty breathing, fatigue, sneezing, and spitting. When the home remedies proved ineffective, Luke likely visited a doctor. It probably did not take the doctor long to ascertain that Luke appeared to have consumption (Tuberculosis).

In the 1840s roughly one out of seven of all Americans died of the disease.  It was named consumption as the bacteria involved eats away at those inflicted with it. In 1846 identification of the bacterium was decades in the future. The condition had several names, with “Great White Plague” most prevalent in the 17^th century. That name related to the many patients who became quite pale as the disease progressed.