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On December 4, 1857, in a house on Michigan Street, which had already been prepared and furnished for their occupancy, Samuel Osbourne, aged twenty, and Fanny Van de Grift, aged seventeen, were united in marriage. All the notables of the town, including Governor Willard, to whom young Osbourne was private secretary, and the entire staff of State officers, attended.
This great work was brought to a sudden end by the illness of Lucy McCrae. At this time the Van de Grift family were living in a house on Illinois Street. This house had a cellar door at the back. To quote the words of her schoolmate, Ella Hale: "At this cellar door the children used to gather to hear fairy and ghost stories.
Her son, Jacob Van de Grift, was born in Philadelphia in 1816. Upon the early death of her first husband she married again, presenting to her children the cruel stepfather of fiction. Indeed, the story of our father's childhood and youth and the adventures of his brothers and sisters reads more like melodrama than sober fact.
In after years, when Beecher had become a national figure and scandal attacked his name, the friend of his youth, Jacob Van de Grift, clung loyally to his faith in his old pastor and firmly refused to believe any of the charges against him.
All too soon came the time when these days of careless childish joys were brought to a close. A new era opened, and romance, which budded early in that time and place, began to unfold its first tender leaves. Various youths of the town, attracted by the piquant prettiness and sparkling vivacity of the eldest daughter, began to haunt the Van de Grift house.
In the sentimental fashion of the day, these sighing swains carved her name on the trees, and so wide was the circle of her fascination that there was scarcely a tree in the place that did not bear somewhere on its long-suffering trunk the name or initials of Fanny Van de Grift.
This I know came to her as a direct inheritance from our mother, Esther Van de Grift, who was never known to give way under the stress of great need. In her fondness for animals she reminds one of her maternal ancestress, Elizabeth Knodle, who used to rush out and seize horses by the bridle when she thought they were being driven too fast by their cruel drivers.
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