 In 1855 he traveled to Minnesota to visit his uncle Lemuel Bolles, who had settled in Washington County in 1842 and built the first private gristmill north of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.The younger Bolles liked what he saw and returned the following year with his wife Sophronia and their children to settle permanently.They picked a location a little farther up Valley Creek from Lemuel's mill, adjacent to the Point Douglas to Superior Military Road, where they constructed this house and a blacksmith shop.