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sciences, and made him a keen and discriminatino- 

 observer of material things ; a kind of education well 

 adapted to fit him for the great enterprises and the 

 high and responsible trusts in which he has distin- 

 guished himself. At twenty years of age, with such 

 education as he had gathered by this somewhat desul- 

 tory method, he determined upon the study of the law, 

 and entered the office of ]Vressrs. Wheaton, Doolittle & 

 Hadley, an eminent law firm in the city of Albany, in 

 the year 1845. Having completed his studies, and 

 been admitted to the bar, he resolved to seek in the 

 AYest a field for his future ])rofessional labors, and 

 finally settled at Port AVashington, Wisconsin, in 1848. 

 Two years afterward he returned to Alb my and was 

 there married to a most estimable young lady, Miss 

 Jane Lathrop, daughter of Dyer Lathrop, a merchant 

 and one of the most respected citizens of Albany. His 

 professional career in his Wisconsin home was of brief 

 duration. While practicing law at Port Washington, 

 a circumstance transpired which some will regard as 

 providential, giving an entirely new direction to his 

 thoughts and energies. A fire occurred which destroyed 

 his law library and swept away nearly all his worldly 

 possessions. The loss was severe, and to one possess- 

 ing less self-reliance would have been disheartening. 

 It served, however, its purpose, and the result was, a 

 determination on his part to join his brothers, who had 

 already emigrated to California. He reached this State 

 on the 12th day of July, 1852, and found his brothers 

 engaged in mining and trade. Without any practical 

 knowledge of either of these occupations, Mr. Stanford 

 determined, for the time, to abandon the practice of 



