[2][3] In December 1811, his family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and the next spring found a farm 20 miles east in Clermont County, where he spent his youth.
That year, he settled in Connersville, Indiana,[3] where he read law with Caleb B.
[2] Coombs was admitted to the bar at Connorsville in the spring of 1834, and for a short time practiced law with Smith, then in Wabash from 1835 to 1847, and in Fort Wayne from 1847 to 1840, before he entered California via Cape Horn.
On December 2, 1882, Governor Albert G. Porter appointed him to a seat in the Indiana Supreme Court vacated by James Worden.
They had eleven children, three of whom survived him when he died at home after several months of declining health.