After their arrival in San Francisco, Sacramento was determined upon as a place of business, and young Bancroft worked in the mines until arrangements could be made with his brother-in-law. But Derby's death in the meantime ended the plan, and in 1853, he set out to try his fortune at the newly-boomed mining town of Crescent City. Here he was employed as bookkeeper and bookseller, and made six or eight thousand dollars, most of which he subsequently lost through investing in Crescent City property. In 1855, Mr. Bancroft made a visit to his old home in the East, and his sister, in return for his assistance in recovering the amount of Derby's California investment, let him have the sum, amounting to $5,500, with which to begin business. Obtaining credit in New York he shipped a ten thousand dollar stock of goods for San Francisco, and with Kenny organized the firm of H. H. Bancroft and Company about December 1, 1856. From the first, Mr. Bancroft tells us, he had a taste for publishing, and it was but three years until the inception of what grew into the historical project. In 1859, Wm. H. Knight, manager of the Bancroft publishing department, while employed in preparing the Hand Book Almanac for the next year, asked for the books necessary to carry on the work. It occurred to the head of the firm that he would again have occasion to refer to books on the coast states, and he accordingly transferred to Mr. Knight a copy of each of the fifty or seventy-five books in stock that had reference to the country. Later he added to the number by purchases in second-hand stores, and when in the East secured from the bookstores of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, volumes which fell under his observation. By 1862, he had a thousand volumes, and upon a visit to London and Paris in that year, learned that much more remained to be done. In 1866, he started on a search throughout Europe, which resulted in increasing his collection to ten thousand volumes. As to the field covered by these works, he says: "Gradually and almost imperceptibly had the area of my efforts enlarged. From Oregon it was but a step to British Columbia and Alaska; and as I was obliged from California to go to Mexico and Spain, it finally became settled in my mind to make the western half of North America my field": (Lit. Ind. 180). He now began the collection of Mexican works and the purchase of private libraries in the United States. In 1869, after ten years' collecting, the library numbered sixteen thousand volumes, about half of which were pamphlets. In May of the next year, these were placed on one floor of the Bancroft building on Market Street, and a young New Englander named Henry L. Oak, lately editor of a religious journal published by the firm, was installed as librarian.