​Winters on the Illinois Prairie are always long, dark and can be brutally cold. The winter of 1846 was particularly hard for a group of weakened immigrants who had just traveled thousands of miles to reach their new home. Makeshift shelters consisting of tents, log huts, and earthen dugouts were erected shortly before the first snows arrived. They were generally inadequate, damp and overcrowded. These conditions provided an ideal breeding ground for respiratory illnesses.

In 1891, it was written that the small village of Bishop Hill in northwestern Illinois will “always occupy a prominent place in any history of the State of Illinois.” At its founding in 1846, Chicago had a population of barely 14,000, Bishop Hill’s 1,100 settlers composed a quarter of the population of Henry County, and the state of Illinois was newly developing its identity. Bishop Hill was founded by a group of Swedish immigrants who followed their leader, Erik Jansson, to