John was one of the family's great wanderers.

He was born in Vermont, but by the age of 21 had settled in Indiana.

He built one of the first homes in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1842, where he was a fur trader, and five years later established a mill on the middle of the river "about 10 miles from the fort" where it was the only milling point in central Iowa for years.

By the 1860s he had moved to western Kansas, which later became part of Colorado. He was a miner for a few years with his son George.

In 1870, he was in Golden City, Colo., where he was a sawmill proprietor. He later bought a ranch near Buffalo Springs, Colo., and served as a Park County commissioner.