I found a place the same day for the same wages but there I only worked one half of a day. The work there was real common work where I could learn nothing, so I left again and found another place in Bowery where they made some what medium furniture, and here again after a week they told me I was too far back in experience, they would keep me though if I would work for $5.00 per week. I concluded to try it for a while.

Now by chance I looked up an old friend of my brother who was Foreman in one of those fine furniture establishments on Broadway and after I had made his acquaintance, to my delight, he offered me work, he paid me five dollars and fifty cents per week and gave me the best chance to learn and complete myself in business.

Here I worked all summer but towards fall I asked for more wages, but this my friend would not grant me, so I left him, found another place also on Broadway, a real fine place for seven dollars wages per week.

Before this though I went to Boston to visit my brother and when I came back I brought the girl of my acquaintance along to New York. Her brother came that summer from Germany and I had found him a job in the same establishment where I was working.

When we came to New York I found her a place there as servant girl (for one month). Now, I thought, I had a good place, earned good wages for those times, and by late fall we concluded to get married, which we did. Oct. 23, 1859 we went into matrimony. I made out of Catharina Elisabeth Ungemah, a Mrs. Finger.

Christmas was approaching and business began to become poor and I was discharged, rather bad, no work and not much money. I looked for a job every day for two weeks, then a cousin who had contracted for varnishing pianos for a small firm in Broom Street.

He offered me a job if I would work for $5.50 per week, which I gladly accepted and so I worked that winter until spring for that small wage. In spring my cousin raised my wages a half dollar and it seems he thought I should be satisfied for the summer, so I looked around and found a job for $7.50 per week with the promise to have soon eight dollars with the piano firm of Steinway & Sons. Thereupon I quit with my cousin and accepted my new job.

The promise was kept all right after three weeks they paid me $8.00 per week, which got me up in good shape now.

My home I had made in Pitt Street between Broom & Grand Street, this was quite a way off from the Steinway Factory so I moved to 843 3rd Avenue between 55th & 56th Street, and here it was where our first boy was born. On the 20th of September 1860 Christopher Henry was born.

The summer of 1860 was a real good time for me and my young wife, I had to work pretty hard but every Saturday evening I had earned my eight dollars and that was in those days, very good.