In 1875, the widowed de Stearns Baker married Colonel Robert S. Baker (1826–1894), a wealthy Anglo American from Rhode Island who owned Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica, where they settled. Colonel Baker had come to California in 1849 during the Gold Rush and worked in the San Francisco mining supplies business, as the company Cooke and Baker. He then worked in the cattle and sheep trade in Northern California, before purchasing Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica from the Sepulveda family for the opportunities in the cattle trade it offered. With this purchase, he moved to Los Angeles, where he met and married de Stearns Baker. Baker's possession, through the marriage, of the Bandini family's holdings of Rancho La Laguna and Rancho La Puente further expanded his ranching business.