 After a year-long sojourn abroad, they returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where her father became director of San Francisco's streetcar lines, the Market Street Railway, in an era when public transportation was a privately owned enterprise.Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school.During their residence in Oakland, they lived for four years on a ten-acre lot, and Stein built many memories of California there.