Eliza Hamilton Holly died in Washington, D.C., on October 17, 1859, after an illness lasting at least a month. Her friend Marian Gouverneur's memoir supplies that minimum duration, but the disease itself is not securely identified. Eliza had spent many years caring for her mother, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, who died in 1854, and had also encouraged the preservation of her father Alexander Hamilton's memory. By the time of her own illness she was a widow and had outlived both parents. An episode of sickness during travel in 1837, sometimes described as possibly yellow fever, was separated from her death by more than twenty years and should not be assumed to have caused it. The final account supports a period of illness in Washington, rather than a sudden death, but does not provide a trustworthy list of symptoms, physicians, or treatments. The much better known narrative of her father's death after the Burr duel is a different event. Her own last weeks remain imperfectly recorded, and the duration reported by her friend is retained without turning an unnamed illness into a definite modern diagnosis.