Almost a decade later, in 1859, while Colonel Canby was commander of Fort Bridger, Utah Territory (now in the state of Wyoming), the Canbys spent an enjoyable Christmas with Captain Henry Hopkins Sibley a charming but volatile Louisianan who had graduated from West Point a year ahead of Canby. It is not certain whether Louisa had met Sibley previously although many rumors ranging from the outlandish (that Louisa was Sibley's sister) to the plausible (that her husband could have been best man at Sibley's 1840 wedding) would circulate on the Union side during 1862. Canby and Sibley certainly had crossed paths previously: Canby served on a court-martial panel that exonerated Sibley in 1858, and he subsequently endorsed Sibley's invention, the Sibley tent, which would be widely used during the Civil War. (The two men could have known each other earlier since both were at West Point and served in Florida and Mexico at about the same times, but it is uncertain whether they knew each other before the late 1850s.)