Bill was an engineer on the railroad. From Otis Skinner: "My Uncle Bill, an engineer who had run the first train through Dismal Swamp in Virginia and his hard-favored wife and my cousin, Bert, came from their home in Indiana for reunions in Proctorsville. Bert, bigger and rougher than I, generally came off the victor in our frequent squabble which sometimes took a note of seriousness." The Skinner homestead in Proctorsville, passed to Bill who carried on a tin shop and took up the farming profession. Bill’s hearing was slightly impaired by many years of riding in the cab of a wood-burning locomotive. According to W.L. Skinner: "... he never in summer, drove through Proctorsville Gulf but he did not pull in 'Old Putty Head', his horse, cup his hand to his ear that he might catch some of the most beautiful, uplifting notes that came from the New England woods— the songs of the hermit and the wood thrush, or 'wood larks' as he used to call them." Mr. Skinner was an avid fisherman, and spent many good fishing trips at Plymouth Pond before it was popular to do so. In the attic of the old Skinner house he had suspended a bed frame by long ropes from the rafters, and here, on a rainy afternoon, he would lie on his swing bed and listen to the deluge of rain on the roof just over his head. He gave all of his livestock pet names and he referred to his hens as "pelicans."
William and Harriet lived in Ohio and Indiana with the exception of eleven years that were spent in Vermont, two of them in Waterbury. We learn from the Vermont Tribune, Proctorsville, 8 Nov., 1872: “Wm. H. Skinner, formerly of the Waterbury Hotel, has sold his Hotel and removed to his former residence in this place. He intends living in quiet, free from the cares of hotel life.” —8 Oct., 1886: ".... Mrs. William Skinner of Rochester, Indiana, who has spent the summer East has returned to Indiana, accompanied by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Mary Paige Skinner."
William d. in Rochester, Indiana, 10 April, 1896. Harriet died at Rochester, Indiana, at the home of her son, A. H. Skinner, 20 Sept., 1903. The body was brought back for burial in Cavendish.