 Over the winter of 1852-53 he lived in what is now Ferndale in the cabin of Stephen Shaw. His wife and two of their children died that winter, and he may have gone back to Illinois to bring back his mother and three remaining children by 1854. In 1853 he started working as a hunter, feeding U.S. troops in Fort Humboldt. While at Fort Humboldt he met future president Ulysses S. Grant, and future General George Crook. According to tradition, about this time, he brought the first herd of cattle to Humboldt County.
