When he arrived Ladd Yocum was running a hotel in a tent; there was nothing else on the town site. Late in the fall George T. Challiss completed his store, which was the first building of any kind in Atchison, according to Mr. Taylor. He says that George Million did not erect his claim shanty until the following year. Mr. Taylor first settled in the bluffs, northeast of Atchison, but afterwards moved to a tract of land owned by a man named O. B. Dickerson, who afterwards built the first livery stable in Atchison. Dickerson sold his claim to a man named Adams, B. T. Stringfellow’s father-in-law, for $600.00, but Adams did not comply with the law and Taylor jumped it. For a while Taylor and Adams lived on the same quarter, and became acquainted; then Taylor discovered that Adams paid $600.00 for the claim, and gave him his money back. Taylor said he never had any short words with Adams about the claim, but once. They met on the hill, overlooking the river, one day, and were looking at the wreck of the old “Pontiac,” which is now said to have contained several hundred barrels of whiskey. “Well,” said Adams, “when are you going?” “Going where?” asked Taylor. “To Nova Scotia,” replied Adams. “I am not going at all,” was Taylor’s response, which Adams understood to mean that he was not going to leave the claim, but intended to fight. A compromise soon followed. Taylor says the “Pontiac” was carried off by Atchison people, and put into their houses, and that years afterwards, the writing on the wheel house could be seen around town. There was no whiskey left in the hold; indeed, the hold was carried away. The Taylor place was considered a great deal more valuable in 1855 than it is now; people felt sure that within four or five years John Taylor would cut it up in town lots and sell them at fabulous prices, and go abroad. John Taylor’s sympathies were always with the South Carolinians, who made this section so warm in 1856, but said that only one in ten were good citizens; the others were toughs. One of them, a man named Newhall, was killed in the fight at Hickory Point. John Robinson, captain of a southern party at Hickory Point, was an Atchison man, and was shot in the hip.