at Washington City where he remained many years. His health at length
failing from steady application to business and conscientious devotion
to his employer's interests, he was induced to seek its restoration in
the invigorating climate of California. He arrived in the country just
previous to the discovery of gold. The marvelous growth of City and
State soon required facilities for the transaction of business, and he
became a resident of San Francisco, and established the first banking
house in that City. For several years he was eminently successful in
business; and his strict honesty and integrity secured for him the
abiding confidence and respect of the business community. But the sudden
and extreme depression in business in 1855 closed his doors as well as
those of many other bankers and merchants. By the surrender to his
creditors of all he possessed, even his homestead, which, to the value
of five thousand dollars, the laws of California allowed him to retain,
and which might well be coveted by him as a home for his wife and six
children; every claim against him was promptly met and discharged.
Retaining amidst all his reverses, the respect of all who knew him, he
engaged as a clerk in the banking house of Adams & Co. where most of his
old customers followed him, induced to do so by their confidence in him.
After the failure of that firm, he was for some time out of active
employment. But compelled by the necessities of a large family to seek
it, he determined to establish a daily newspaper and take upon himself
the editorial charge of it. For such an undertaking, his large
experience in business, his resolute spirit, his sound judgment, his
keen insight into character, his lofty scorn and detestation of
meanness, profligacy, peculation and fraud, eminently fitted him. The
paper, the Evening Bulletin, was first issued on the eighth day of
October, 1855. From that day to the day of his death, he devoted all his
faculties most faithfully and conscientiously to the exposure of guilt,
the laying bare gigantic schemes for defrauding the public, the