Robert and his brother Bedford went west between 1900 and 1910 to seek their fortune and to escape the tuberculosis that was potentially impacting their health in Decatur Co. TN. By 1910, they were working near Clovis, New Mexico where Robert met and married Edith Stone from Shelbina, Missouri. Edith's father owned and operated a cement mixing business in Clovis. Around 1918, Robert and Edith along with their first child found their way north to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Robert found work as a boiler maker for railroad steam engines near their home on Van Lennen Avenue in Cheyenne.
Sources: Harriet Gollady, Jim Montgomery, census records, copy of family bible received from Harriet Golladay.