The Great Hunger, caused by successive failures in the potato crop and the export of other food sources by the indifferent English colonialists, brought with it extreme hardship for the poorer classes, with death due to diseases like typhus and cholera, prevalent due to poor sanitation, contaminated drinking water and other poor living conditions. Starvation, which impacted many parts of the country, was averted in Virginia due to the efforts of the local Famine Relief Committee, who made extra rations of Indian meal available in return for hard labour, this included women and children breaking stones for making roads and the building of the local Catholic church which took place during 1845 on lands donated by the landlord.