From her, and through her from Engel Freund, who was what is called "a character," Father Hecker seems to have derived many of his life-long peculiarities.

"I never knew a son so like his mother," writes to us one who had an intimate acquaintance with both of them for more than forty years.
She adds: "Mrs.Hecker was a woman of great energy of character and strong religious nature.

Her son, Father Hecker, inherited both of these traits, and there was the warmest sympathy between them.

He was her youngest son, her baby, she called him, but with all her tender love she had a holy veneration for his character as priest.
"She deeply sympathized with him through the trials and anxieties that were his in his search after truth, and when his heart found rest, and the aspirations of his soul were answered in the Holy Catholic Church, her noble heart accepted for him what she could not see for herself.

She said to a lady who spoke to her on the subject and who could not be reconciled to the conversion of a daughter: 'No, I would not change the faith of my sons.