All of this part of Georgetown west of High Street (Wisconsin Avenue)
used to be called Holy Hill, because of the great number of Irish who
dwelt in the neighborhood. On Saint Patrick's Day there were parades and
fights, and all kinds of excitement.

There were also a good many respectable colored Catholics, and near
here, on Potomac Street, dwelt a family of Coakleys. Magdalen Coakley
thought she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary. She got herself
up to look like the Virgin, in sweeping white robes and a sky-blue veil
and cloak. She was not a very dark negress and had a fine countenance
and striking figure. She used to go about the streets blessing little
children and wanting to baptize them, followed, of course, by a string
of boys making fun of her. She would go up to Trinity Church and stand
by the door; but once she wanted to help the priest give Communion, so
they had to forbid her coming. Of course the poor soul thought she was
being persecuted, but she took it in a Christian manner and prayed all
the harder, on the street and everywhere. She lived to be an old woman
still wearing her picturesque costume.

Her sister, Frances, was nurse for three generations for the Hein family
whose home was at number 3249 N Street, now entirely changed by its
modernized roof and steps.

Samuel Hein had emigrated from Koenigsberg, Germany, as a young man, and
had become an American citizen. He was fifty-six years in the Coast and
Geodetic Survey, retiring as its disbursing officer. He was an ardent
Union man, and during the four years of the Civil War kept the Stars and
Stripes flying from one of his windows. All through the two terrible
days after the Battle of Bull Run, when the Northern troops were
streaming through Georgetown, Mr. Hein maintained a soup kitchen for the
soldiers in his back yard. His wife was the daughter of John Simpson who
lived on the corner of High Street (Wisconsin Avenue) and West (P)
Streets. Her brother, James Alexander Simpson, was a rather well-known
portrait painter. They were quite a musical and artistic family.

One son Charles Hein was an artist and had his studio in a little frame
house still standing on 31st (Congress) behind another house, opposite
the post office. There he took pupils. He was very picturesque in
appearance, tall and dark, wore a drooping mustache, low collar with
flowing black cravat and wide-brimmed black hat and cape.

Another son Col. O. L. Hein in an intere