Society as I Have Found It

How it begins

My Family—My Mother an Angel of Beauty and Charity—My Father’s Nobleness of Character—Building Bonfires on Paradise Rocks and Flying Kites from Purgatory with Uncle Sam Ward—My Brother the Soldier—My Brother the Lawyer. In 1820 my mother, a beautiful girl of eighteen years, was introduced into New York society by her sister, Mrs. Samuel Ward, the wife of Samuel Ward, the banker, of the firm of Prime, Ward & King. She was a great belle in the days when Robert and Richard Ray and Prescott Hall were of the jeunesse dorée of this city.