CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD TOWARDS the close of the eighteenth century a German clockmaker named Engel Freund, accompanied by his wife and children, left his native town of Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia, to seek a new home in America.
There is a family tradition to the effect that his forefathers were French, and that they came into Germany on account of some internal commotion in their own country.

The name makes it more probable that they were Alsatians who quietly moved across the Rhine, either when their province was first ceded to France, or perhaps later, at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685.

When Engel Freund quitted Germany the disturbing influences of the French Revolution may have had a considerable share in determining his departure.

He landed at New York in 1797 and established himself in Hester Street, between Christie and Forsyth.
His wife, born Ann Elizabeth Schneider, in 1764, was a native of Frankenburg, Hesse Cassel.

She became the mother of a son and several daughters, who attained maturity and settled in New York.