Panic engulfed New York City like in an apocalyptic movie. Almost half of the city fled the threat of an unknown contagion. The long forgotten global pandemic of Asiatic cholera that reached America in July 1832 set off a mass panic. Since the disease seemed to know no boundaries or limits, city residents who could afford it found ways to leave the city any way they could for places without cholera. Refugees bought passage on steamboats headed up the Hudson, paying almost any price. Most villages along the Hudson provided shelter, Nyack among them. An often-fatal disease of unknown origin...