Kit Carson - Early Life

Early Life

Born in Madison County, Kentucky, near the city of Richmond, in 1809, Carson moved at the age of one year with his parents and siblings to a rural area near Franklin, Missouri. Carson's father, Lindsey Carson, a farmer of Scots-Irish descent, had fought in the Revolutionary War under General Wade Hampton. He had a total of fifteen Carson children: five by Lucy Bradley, his first wife, and ten by Kit Carson's mother, Rebecca Robinson. Kit Carson was the eleventh child in the family. He was known from an early age as "Kit". The Carson family settled on a tract of land owned by the sons of Daniel Boone, who had purchased the land from the Spanish prior to the Louisiana Purchase. The Boone and Carson families became good friends, working and socializing together, and intermarrying.

Carson was eight years old when his father was killed by a falling tree while clearing land. Lindsey Carson's death reduced the Carson family to a desperate poverty, forcing young Kit Carson to drop out of school to work on the family farm, as well as to engage in hunting. At age 14 Carson was apprenticed to a saddlemaker (Workman's Saddleshop) in the settlement of Franklin, Missouri. Franklin was situated at the eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail, which had opened two years earlier. Many of the clientele at the saddleshop were trappers and traders, from whom Carson heard stirring tales of the Far West. Carson is reported to have found work in the saddle shop suffocating: he once stated "the business did not suit me, and I concluded to leave". His master may have agreed with his leaving since he offered the odd amount of 1 cent for his return and waited a month to post the notice in the local newspaper.

At sixteen, Carson secretly signed on with a large merchant caravan heading to Santa Fe— with the job of tending the horses, mules, and oxen. During the winter of 1826–1827 he stayed with Matthew Kinkead, a trapper and explorer, in Taos, New Mexico, then known as the capital of the fur trade in the Southwest. Kinkead had served with Carson's older brothers during the War of 1812, and he taught Carson the skills of a trapper. Carson also began learning the necessary languages. Eventually he became fluent in Spanish, Navajo, Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute.