He joined a train of pioneers and reached a Mormon settlement near San Bernardino, California, in January 1850.

[1] A Roman Catholic, Hayes was married twice—first, on November 16, 1848, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Emily Martha Chauncey of Harford County, Maryland, who died in 1857, and second, on August 2, 1866, in San Diego, California, to Adelaida Serrano.

[1][2][3] Hayes was one of the men who helped bring the Sisters of Charity to Los Angeles to establish a hospital.

"[1] In 1856, he freed 14 enslaved black people, including Biddy Mason, who were held in captivity by Mormons in San Bernardino.

[1] One biographer wrote that Hayes "courageously administered justice in the violent Fifties, when mob rule so frequently took matters under its own control."

While he was county attorney in 1851[,] a disgruntled litigant on horseback fired at him from three feet away, but the bullet passed harmlessly through Hayes' hat.