John C Fremont: The Mapmaker
John C Fremont: The Pathfinder
25 Apr 2024
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John Charles Frémont was an explorer, topologist, botanist, soldier, politician, railroad tycoon, gold miner, abolitionist, and one of the most controversial entities in the opening of the American West. He achieved fame and infamy, wealth and destitution, military command and court-martial. His life was as up and down, challenging and exhilarating, as the trails he blazed across the continent.
He was born under the surname Frémon [pronounced FrayMON’], the illegitimate son of a French-Canadian schoolteacher named Charles Frémon and Anne Whiting, the married woman he had been hired to teach French. Anne was married to John Pryor, a Richmond tobacco merchant of considerable wealth. However, Pryor was in his 60s, and his young wife was but 17 years of age, so the dashing French-Canadian soon swept her off her feet.
When Pryor learned his young wife was having an affair with her tutor, he enlisted the Virginia authorities to have Frémon arrested. Frémon and Anne fled to Savannah, Georgia, where she gave birth to a son on January 21, 1813. The infant was given the name John Charles Frémont, retaining the French aigu [Egg-oow] over the letter e in his last name, indicating it was pronounced with the sound “-ay”. Though texts still record his last name with the aigu, it is almost uniformly pronounced with the sound of “ee”, as in “free” or “tree”.
Eventually Frémon made his way back to Norfolk, Virginia, where he died in 1818 after failing to obtain a writ of divorce from the Virginia Assembly. His widow and children found themselves with little income. They moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where young John, well aware of the circumstances of his birth grew to be a rebellious, proud youth, unencumbered by friends and somewhat contemptuous of rules and societal norms. A Charleston lawyer named John Mitchell took an interest in Anne, and thus in her son John, and helped provide his early education. In 1829, young John entered the College of Charleston, though indifferent attendance led to his withdrawal in 1831.
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Further Reading:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-C-Fremont
https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/B000398
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jessie-Ann-Benton-Fremont
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=22
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/John_C._Fremont
https://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/expansion/pair-westward-apotheosis/
https://www.britannica.com/event/Bear-Flag-Revolt
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-california/
https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/january-31
https://archive.org/details/fremontpathmarke0002nevi/page/n7/mode/2up
https://home.treasury.gov/about/history/freedmans-bank-building/financial-panic-of-1873#:~:text=The%20Panic%20of%201873&text=One%20of%20the%20worst%20happened,in%20American%20projects%2C%20particularly%20railroads.
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