Marble was very dear, reasoned the thrifty and far-sighted City Fathers of the day, and as the population of New York were never likely to settle to any extent above Chambers Street, the rear of the hall would be seen so seldom that this economy would not be noticeable.

What is now Fourteenth Street was then a place given over to market-gardens.
Rutgers Street, Rutgers Place, Henry Street, were fashionable localities, and the adjacent quarter, now so malodorous and disreputable, was eminently respectable.

Freund's daughters, as they left the parental roof for modest houses of his gift close by, no doubt had reason to consider themselves abundantly fortunate in their surroundings.
One of these daughters, Caroline Sophia Susanna Henrietta Wilhelmina, born in Elberfeld on the 2d of March, 1796, was still a babe in arms at the time of the family emigration.

She was a tall, fair, handsome girl, not long past her fifteenth birthday when she became a wife.
Her husband, John Hecker, was nearly twice her age, having been born in Wetzlar, Prussia, May 7, 1782.

He was the son of another John Hecker, a brewer by trade, who married the daughter of a Colonel Schmidt.