Charles Bent was an American fur trader. He also served as the first civilian Governor of New Mexico from 1846 to 1847.
Background
Charles Bent was born on November 11, 1799, at Charleston, West Virginia, United States, the eldest of four brothers whose activities fill a large space in the annals of the Colorado-New Mexico frontier. His father was Silas and his mother Martha (Kerr) Bent. In 1788 the family moved to western Virginia, where Silas became a judge of the court of common pleas, and in 1805 to Marietta, Ohio. Appointed principal deputy surveyor of the new Territory of Louisiana, Silas moved with his family to St. Louis, arriving there September 17, 1806.
Career
Both Charles and his brother William, ten years his junior, became interested in the fur trade, and it is probable that both of them were in the Sioux country, as employees of the American Fur Company, as early as 1823. In the following year the brothers, with Ceran St. Vrain, who for many years was to be their associate, visited the upper Arkansas on a fur-trapping expedition and built a stockade in the vicinity of the present Pueblo. Charles was probably a member of the expedition, led by St. Vrain, which in June or July 1826 visited Santa Fé and trapped the New Mexican streams. In 1828 the three associates, now organized as Bent & St. Vrain, began the building of what was to become the most famous of the old trading posts, Bent's Fort, at a point on the Arkansas near the present La Junta.
In 1829 and again in 1832 and 1833 Charles captained a trading caravan to Santa Fé from the American settlements. The fort was completed in 1832, and thereafter Charles and St. Vrain made their permanent homes in New Mexico and gave most of their time to the New Mexican business of the company, leaving to William and to the two younger brothers, George (1814 - 46) and Robert (1816 - 41), the management of the fort.
Gen. Kearny, after his bloodless conquest of New Mexico, appointed Charles civil governor and left for California. The departure of the troops gave occasion for an attempt by Mexicans and Indians in certain localities to overthrow the American rule. In the uprising at Taos, January 19, 1847, Charles and several others were killed. He was everywhere loved and admired for his sterling character, and the tragedy of his death was deeply felt throughout the frontier. Kit Carson, linking his name with that of St. Vrain, in a statement dictated in 1857, regretted that he could not pay an adequate tribute to them for their kindness. "I can say only, " he continued, "that their equals were never in the mountains. "
Achievements
Connections
In 1835, at San Fernando de Taos, Charles married Maria Ignacia Jaramillo.