Maria's uncle, the Honorable Benjamin Isaacs, presided over legal cases in a courtroom located on the first floor of the Bedford Court House. Opened in 1787, the building is one of three eighteenth century court houses in New York State.

Benjamin Isaacs' responsibilities as a lawyer, judge, and Westchester Assemblyman incurred travel. Isaacs' letter written to Maria in 1818 on exhibit describes one of his business ventures to Albany and his concerns over household affairs in his absence. Maria may have come to live with the widowed Isaacs to help manage his house, farm, and store, given Isaacs' rigorous professional schedule.

A nineteenth century sketch of the Bedford Court House.

From the early part of the nineteenth century until 1870, during all of the years that Maria lived in Bedford, the town's imposing court house shared the Westchester County seat with the then town of White Plains. Maria thereby resided in one most politically prominent towns in the county, esposed to the activity in her young adulthood through her well-established uncle.

Benjamin Isaacs' grave site, located beyond the tree to the right in the town cemetery, looks onto the building in which he spent much of his career.