View of Pittsburgh from Mt. Washington

From 1850 to ’54, Philip and I went to German school.  We had to pay fifty cents a month.  Mother had four places to wash – Mrs. Waveham’s, Mrs. Ihmsen’s, Mrs. Brook’s, in town, and Mrs. Millinger’s on Mt. Washington and only got fifty cents a day.  She did Mrs. Waveham’s washing at home and I had to get the clothes, take them back and collect twenty-five cents.  It was hard work to get the money, Mrs. Waveham would never have the change.  Money for four week’s work was coming to Mother, so Henry wrote a note for me to take.  When I got there, Mrs. Waveham was not at home but Judge Waveham was sitting on the front step and I gave the note to him.  He looked at it a long time, then he gave me two dollars and said, “Tell your Mother it will be fifty cents for each washing from now on.”  Judge Waveham was a trustee of the Lutheran Church where we all attended Sunday School and Henry was a teacher.  About a week after my visit to his house, he came to see Mother to ask her to be caretaker of the Church.  Mother was so pleased, for that brought her eight dollars a month and she could give up the Mt. Washington work which was too hard on her.¹⁾My Early Life and the Civil War, Conrad Smith, 1920, pages 13-14