After a journey of three weeks we arrived at the parsonage. The congregation had purchased the old Texas church in the western addition of the city, and the parsonage was attached to the church in the rear. It was a comfortable place of six large rooms. The furniture had preceded the family and everything looked homelike and comfortable, so mother had not the sadness of coming to a bare, cheerless, empty house. We were cordially greeted by the elders' wives and families, and when we arrived dinner was upon the table for us. This welcome was more homelike because of our own things having preceded us. And then we were such a busy family that we had little time to waste in repinings. We were all put in the harness--the Sabbath school and choir. We made visits with our parents to the sick and the poor. Because we spoke nothing but the German language, we were obliged to go to school. My oldest sister, Mary, was soon established in the German department of the public school. She was graduated from the Monticello Seminary, St. Louis, before coming there. She taught during the week in the public school and on Saturday taught English in the synagogue. On the Sabbath she played the melodeon in our church. It was there that, as a child, I learned the grand old German hymns of the church under her guidance and which helped to make me the singer I am today. We had now been seven years in Cincinnati and the church had flourished so greatly that a second German Reformed church was the outcome of father's ministry. It was built on Webster street for the purpose of housing the overflow of the first church on Betts street. In all this prosperity California gold and missionary fields were opened and discovered in November, 1847. Father was chosen for California, and the only way to go was over the plains. What a sad family was ours while preparations were made which would take father and brother George, who was now 17 years old, away, as we thought, to the other end of the earth. At last the hour came and the tie that bound pastor and people, father, mother and children was severed. My brother George told me the story of the trip as follows: