Thomas H. Davis appears to have been born in 1850 (on December 31, 1876 he speaks of closing the 26th chapter of his life). He was possibly a soldier, as in January 1875 he speaks of discharging and getting his walking papers. He worked in a repair shop and seems to have been a general handyman, doing odd jobs for various people in the area in addition to his work at the repair shop. These jobs included cleaning and lining furnaces, setting water closets, soldering pipes, tinning door heads, making funnels, putting in pipes, lifting and moving things, roofing, putting up conductors, and various other miscellaneous installation and repair work.

He lived in Newburyport, MA at least from 1875 to April 1880, and probably before. There he lived in various boarding houses. He usually lived in rooms by himself, and seemed to prefer it this way, feeling that if he took on a roommate he would probably become tired of the other person before a week passed. He often suffered bouts of depression. He sometimes fell behind on rent for lack of available work; he was meticulous about documenting the number of hours of work he got in a day or week.

In April 1880 he took up a job in a repair shop with the Union Pacific Rail Road and moved to Armstrong, Kansas. For a short time he lived in a boarding house in Wyandott, Kansas, three miles from Armstrong. In August 1880 he went into partnership with Gurdon Fisk to rent a cottage in Armstrong.