goods emporium, and for many years was without a
conspicuous rival. William I. Tenney, Horace Hinsdale, Henry Gelston,
and Frederick and Henry G. Marquand were jewelers. Tenney's store was on
Broadway near Murray Street; Gelston's was under the Astor House on the
corner of Barclay Street and Broadway; Hinsdale's was on the east side
of Broadway and Cortlandt Street; and the Marquands were on the west
side of Broadway between Cortlandt and Dey Streets.

James Leary bore the palm in New York as the fashionable hatter, and his
shop was on Broadway under the Astor House. As was usual then with his
craft, he kept individual blocks for those of his customers who had
heads of unusual dimensions. In his show window he sometimes exhibited a
block of remarkable size which was adapted to fit the heads of a
distinguished trio, Daniel Webster, General James Watson Webb, and
Charles Augustus Davis. Miss Anna Leary of Newport, his daughter and a
devout Roman Catholic, received the title of Countess from the Pope.

The most prominent hostelry in New York before the days of the Astor
House was the City Hotel on lower Broadway. I have been informed that
the site upon which it stood still belongs to representatives of the
Boreel family, descendants of the first John Jacob Astor. Another, but
of a later period, was the American Hotel on Broadway near the Astor
House. It was originally the town house of John C. Vanden Heuvel, a
member of one of New York's most exclusive families. Upon Mr. Vanden
Heuvel's death this house passed into the possession of his son-in-law,
John C. Hamilton, who changed it into a hotel. Its proprietor was
William B. Cozzens, who was so long and favorably known as a hotel
proprietor. At this same time he had charge of the only hotel at West
Point, and it was named after him. If any army officers survive who were
cadets during Cozzens's _regime_ they will recall with pleasure his
kindly bearing and attractive manner. Mr. Vanden Heuvel's country
residence was in the vicinity of Ninetieth Street overlooking the Hudson
River. His other daughters were Susan Annette, who married Mr. Thomas S.
Gibbes of South Carolina, and Justine, who became the wife of Gouverneur
S. Bibby, a cousin of my husband.

As I first remember Union Square it was in the outskirts of the city.
Several handsome houses had a few years previously been erected there by
James F. Penniman, the son-in-law of Mr. Samuel Judd, the latter of whom
amassed a