After the war, the family went to Mobile, Alabama, where Charlotte opened an enormously profitable dry goods store, and Catherine ran multiple boardinghouses. Here, Charlotte met and eventually married Edward Smith, an Irish-born merchant. The marriage failed, and almost immediately after the birth of her second son, Charlotte moved to Chicago. The bookstore she started there was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1871, and she fled with her children to St. Louis, where she published a book on the Fire, and was soon doing newspaper work.