KIT CARSON

Kit Carson was a man who was born in Madison County, Kentucky. He was raised in Franklin, Missouri, a rural town. He was of Scotland and Ireland descent and was known for fighting in the Revolutionary War. Kit Carson was a sibling of 15 children. Five were from the first wife of Lindsey Carson and the other ten were from Kit Carson’s mother, known as Rebecca Robinson. When Kit was eight years old, his father was killed by a falling tree while trying to clear out land. When he died, it caused the Carson family to go deep into poverty.

Kit Carson then dropped out of school and began working on the family farm and hunting. By the time he was 14, he was an apprentice to saddle making in a saddle shop located in Franklin, Missouri. It was there that he began hearing different stories of the Far West from trappers and traders. He no longer wanted to work in the “suffocating” saddle shop and set out on an expedition to Santa Fe. He learned the skills of a trapper from Matthew Kinhead, who was a friend of Kit Carson’s father. He then became fluent in languages, such as Spanish, Navajo, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Paiute and Arapaho.

Kit was a trapper between the time periods of 1829 to 1840. He was signed to a group of 40 men who were trappers and together they began working along the Santa Fe Trail towards Mexico. The group was led by Ewing Young. They captured animals for their fur and sold them to people throughout the states. Later, Carson married a Cheyenne woman in 1841 and they had a daughter named Adeline, who he decided to take back west in 1842. Kit then provided her with an education, before meeting up with a man named Fremont who was asked Kit to be their guide to the South Pass. Carson City and some other areas, monuments and museums were named after Kit Carson.