In the fall of 1838 I went to Milwaukee and arranged with a merchant for stoves, boots, and shoes to sell on commission, and with one team I drove them to Beloit and sold them at a good profit to the settlers who were coming in almost every day. In the winter of 1838-9 we lived in a part of Mr. Blodgett’s new frame house. In the summer of 1838 I made a claim of 160 acres on Rock River, two miles above Fort Atkinson, which was covered with timber, much of it basswood. In the winter of 1838-9 I hired four men to cut logs and rafted them in the spring to Beloit and had them cut on shares by Messrs. Goodhue and Moore. From the sales of this lumber I paid my men and from a part of it I built a comfortable house for my family. My sisters, Emeline and Rosetta, had been left behind, one in Montreal and Rosetta with an uncle in Burke, Vermont, under the care of a physician, having a sprained foot that she did not step upon for three years and which is not well yet. They came west in the fall of 1838, so in the new house we all gathered and were very happy. In March, 1839, the first land sale took place in Milwaukee, and I was chosen bidder for all claimants in the south half of Rock County east of Rock River, the lands on the west side having been brought into market before at a land sale in Milwaukee. The claimants all secured their lands, they standing by me and permitting no one to bid but me on their lands, and I got all for them at the upset price of $1.25 per acre. Here I met the cousin and agent of Gen. Philip Kearney, and arranged with him to buy lands for the general and take the agency of the lands purchased. I made entries for him at Milwaukee and afterwards at Dixon land sale and subsequently entered some thousands of acres with Mexican soldiers’ land warrants on shares and managed his estate in the west for some years, and in 1856 I bought his remaining lands at $60,000 and closed my account with him. He visited me once in Beloit.