the country, including the North Country of New York, terrifying the inhabitants. As a result, numerous meetings were held in the Village of Watertown as well as surrounding towns and villages to institute sanitary measures. On June 25, 1832, Orville Hungerford was appointed with others to the newly established board of health to oversee local measures to quash the invisible killer. Orville Hungerford served on the Board of Supervisors for the Town of Watertown, New York (later becoming the City of Watertown by legislative act on May 8, 1869) for the following terms: 1835–37, 1841–42, and 1851 until his death. On November 8, 1836, Hungerford was appointed by his district as a presidential elector. In September 1839, U.S. President Martin Van Buren visited Jefferson County, riding in a carriage with Orville Hungerford and his brother-in-law and former business partner Jabez Foster, followed by a procession almost a mile long, from Madison Barracks in Sackets Harbor to Watertown. In 1842, as a Democrat, Hungerford was elected to the 28th and two years later to the 29th U.S. Congress. In his second term, due to his extensive business background, Hungerford served on the powerful Committee on Ways and Means. He supported a tariff on imported goods, which earned him the enmity of Southern Democrats, who were in favor of free trade. His fellow party members offered to nominate him as Vice President of the United States if he would switch his vote on protectionism. However, Hungerford could not be swayed because he wanted to shelter the emerging manufacturing sector from the cheaper wares of Great Britain and other more industrialized European countries. Orville Hungerford often followed the political lead of his mentor, Judge Perley Keyes, a "dextrous lieutenant[]" of one of the founders of the Democratic Party, Martin Van Buren. In 1814–1815 and 1816–1817, Keyes and Van Buren served together in the New York State Senate. Keyes died in 1834, leaving his political connections and loyalties to his protege. In September 1843, Orville Hungerford attended the Democratic Party's New York State Convention, which gathered at Syracuse, New York, to choose delegates for its National Convention that would be held the following year in Baltimore, Maryland. Hungerford was appointed as a delegate who would endorse former U.S. President Martin Van Buren as the presidential candidate in the election of 1844. Van Buren, known as the "Little Magician" and "Sly Fox" as well as