Charles Henry Fromuth was born February 23, 1858, the oldest of nine children, to parents who had immigrated to the United States from Germany. His father Caspar, after several failed years seeking gold in California, married a woman named Christiana Freund. The couple settled in Philadelphia in 1866, where Caspar worked in a carpet factory. Philadelphia was rapidly being transformed into an industrial city, its growing factories fed by waves of immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, England, Poland, Greece, and Germany. Many of these workers moved into the 19th Ward. There the Fromuths settled in a row house at 2101 North Front Street at Diamond Street. Their home was near city refuse dumps, brick factories, and weedy abandoned fields soon to ...