After his father's second marriage he returned home, aiding his father in the farm work, getting his schooling at the district schools of the day, and at an academy, or what would answer to our present day high school. Between 1842 and 1848 Mr. Pixley made two or three trips west, through Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin. Much of this traveling was done on horseback, and he drove a flock of sheep from Oneida county, New York, to Janesville, Wis., around the lower end of Lake Michigan, and on this journey passed through the present site of Chicago, the whole of which he could have bought for the value of his flock of sheep. He bought some land near Janesville and located, going back in October, 1848, to Rochester, N. Y., where he married on October 25 Jane Eliza Lewis, daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth Bowen Lewis.