Angeline was determined her husband should make good use of the talents God had given him. She was courageous as only a Puritan can be. In domestic economy she was unsurpassed. Husband and wife lived on much less than the average college student requires. She mended their old clothes again and again, turning the cloth; and economized with desperate energy.
At first they rented rooms and had the use of the kitchen in a house on Concord Avenue, near the observatory. But their landlady proving to be a woman of bad character, after eight or nine months they moved to a tenement house near North Avenue, where they lived a year. Here they sub-let one of their rooms to a German pack-peddler, a thrifty man, free-thinker and socialist, who was attracted to Mrs. Hall because she knew his language. He used to argue with her, and to read to her from his books, until finally she refused to listen to his doctrines, whereupon he got very angry, paid his rent, and left.
One American feels himself as good as another—if not better—especially when brought up in a new community. But Cambridge was settled long ago, and social distinctions are observed there. It was rather exasperating to Asaph Hall and his wife to be snubbed and ignored and meanly treated because they were poor and without friends. Even their grocer seemed to snub them, sending them bad eggs. You may be sure they quit him promptly, finding an honest grocer in Cambridgeport, a Deacon Holmes.
There is a great advantage in obscurity. Relieved of petty social cares and distractions a man can work. Mrs. Hall, writing to her sister Mary, February 4, 1859, declared her husband was “getting to be a grand scholar”:
.... A little more study and Mr. Hall will be excelled by few in this country in his department of science. Indeed that is the case now, though he is not very widely known yet.
In another letter, dated December 15, 1858, she wrote:
People are beginning to know something of Mr. Hall’s worth and ability.
May 4, 1858 she wrote:
Mr. Hall has just finished computing the elements of the orbit of one Astronomical Journal.
And thus Dr. B. A. Gould, editor of the Journal, became acquainted with the young astronomer who was afterward his firm friend and his associate in the National Academy of Sciences.