At the age of seventeen years he went to work in a blast furnace in Monroe county where he was reared and at this place he worked for six years at low wages. He had the promise of $20 a month, but at the time fifty cents a day was average wages when six cords of wood, pine and chestnut, could be bought for a dollar. He next went to work at the trade of carpenter and millwright and for six years this claimed his attention. From 1861 to 1886 he became a photographer, and he worked at this through Knoxville, Tennessee, and New Orleans.