On October 26th 1867, in Rochester, New Jersey, Richard bigamously married Catherine Cassidy at the Trinity Episcopalian Church. He was later to say of this marriage, in a letter to Colonel Richard R. Hinton, 1 "Once in my life I made a mistake" The mistake was to cost him dear. The marriage appears to have been unhappy from the start and Realf left Catherine to travel around the country, looking for work. In 1873 he divorced Catherine and set up home with Eliza Anne Whapham, the younger sister of his brother-in-law John (married to Sarah Realf). He returned to England in the Summer of 1873 to see his elderly parents who were living in Buxted, Sussex. Letters from this period 2 show Realf being entertained around the neighbourhood and obviously having a very enjoyable time. He returned to America and found that his divorce had been overturned on October 9th 1874. During this time Richard was working as a writer on the "Pittsburgh Daily commercial" where he remained until 1876, paying alimony to Catherine Cassidy throughout the period until, in 1877, he proved that he could no longer afford to do so.

On 24th April 1875, Eliza Realf had a son, Richard. The Realfs now found it necessary to move about the country in an attempt to escape the malice of Catherine Cassidy who did all in her power to injure the couple. Richard began to work as a free-lance lecturer but his health, damaged during his war service, was not good and he was not able to earn enough.

On the 8th March, 1878, Eliza Realf had triplet daughters. Following the birth she was seriously ill and in hospital and Hinton says that the three girls were adopted by "a lady of means". However, one child was not adopted. Minnie Realf was still living with Eliza when she married again and died as recently as 1971. The cost of treatment for Eliza and for their son, who had contracted an eye disease, caused Realf a great deal of concern. When he caught the same eye disease, the family's finances took a distinct turn for the worse and, in June, 1878, after being discharged from the Ophthalmic Hospital in New York, Richard set out for San Francisco hoping to get lecturing work there. When he could not get enough work to enable him to bring his family out to San Francisco as quickly as he wished, he took a job as a labourer in the US Mint, a job well beyond the strength of a man whose health was affected by war service and who had just been discharged from hospital.

[1] Dated 28th July 1869

[2] To his sister Sarah (now Whapham) in the USA, dated 25th June and 9th July 1873