The couple had three daughters and two sons, all of whom were orphaned as children and raised by Peoria community members. The eldest daughter, Anna Ford Davies (1834- ), was also the last to die; her sisters were Mary Frances Ford Bailey (1837-1909) and Julia Ford (who died in 1862, 21 years old and unmarried). Their oldest brother, named either Seuel or George Ford (1844-) volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War and lost an arm while fighting with an Illinois regiment, then moved west with his younger brother Thomas (1847-). Thomas was lynched by a Kansas mob alongside an alleged horse thief, and when Seuel (who worked as a bartender due to his disability) tried to have the leaders held accountable, he too was lynched. Ford was accused of taking "stimulants" as governor, some suggesting politics harmed what could have been an important legal career, but while evidence exists as to the parents' ultimately fatal medical conditions, and Ford's less-than-robust constitution even before his gubernatorial term, definitive evidence of drug abuse is lacking. Legal career After admission to the Illinois bar, possibly in 1820, Ford briefly worked for a pro-Andrew Jackson newspaper in St. Louis, then practiced law at Waterloo and after Cook's re-election to Congress in 1824, in Cook's hometown of Edwardsville, Illinois. After Ford married, the couple moved further north up the Mississippi River to the newly founded mining boom town of Galena in the newly created Jo Daviess County, Illinois. However, his legal practice still failed to prosper (his retiring demeanor and high voice perhaps contributing factors), and Ford lost an election to become the local justice of the peace. Instead, Ford become a member of the commission to establish Illinois's northern boundary (with Wisconsin), which necessitated considerable time at the then-state capital in Vandalia, Illinois. Ford also learned about the state legislature while serving as clerk for various committees, and would later claim that he attended every legislative session from 1825–1847. In 1829, with Forquer's aid, Ford received a gubernatorial appointment as the state's attorney (prosecutor) for the Military Tract District in Western Illinois (a huge district between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers). He soon moved his family to his father-in-law's farm in Versailles (then in Schuyler County, Illinois, but since 1839 in Brown County, Illinois). During the Black Hawk War of 1832, Ford did not resign that office but enlisted in Colonel