Yount was born on May 4, 1794 in Burke County, North Carolina, one of eleven children. His father, Jacob Yount, had served under Gen. Nathanael Greene at the siege of Charles Town, South Carolina. In 1804 the family moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The father and five sons, including George, took part in guarding the settlements against Indians during the War of 1812.
In 1818 Yount began the development of a farm in Howard County, Missouri, and set himself up as a cattleman. For a time he prospered, but the embezzlement of his savings by a trusted neighbor left him impoverished. In the fall of 1825, making what provision he could for his wife and two children, he joined an expedition to Santa Fé. He soon became a trapper, and under Ewing Young took part in several expeditions.
In 1827 he organized a party to trap the Arizona rivers, but at the mouth of the Gila, Sylvester Pattie, James Ohio Pattie, and six followers seceded, and Yount and the others returned. With another company, in the winter of 1828-1829, he journeyed northward to the trapper rendezvous at Bear Lake and for the next two years trapped the northern country. The name Yount's Peak, given to the mountain at the source of the Yellowstone, commemorates his activities in that region. About this time he met Jedediah Strong Smith, just returned from a tragic adventure in California, and what he heard Smith tell of that strange land determined him to see it for himself.
Returning to New Mexico, Yount joined the Pacific-bound expedition of William Wolfskill, which left Taos at the end of September 1830 and arrived in Los Angeles in the following February. Up and down the coast he worked at various tasks, after a time finding a measure of success as a carpenter and shingle maker. In 1834 he journeyed farther north, and at the missions of San Rafael and Sonoma found employment. In the following year he joined the Roman Catholic Church at the time adding Concepcíon to his name - and became a Mexican citizen. He then selected a broad and beautiful tract in the still unsettled Napa Valley and applied for a grant. General M. G. Vallejo befriended him, and in the spring of 1836, three years before John A. Sutter settled at Sacramento, he established himself as the lord of Caymus Rancho and the guardian of the northern frontier against the wild Indians. Employing Christianized Indians as laborers, Yount built a fort and began the cultivation of his grounds. After the arrival of the first American emigrant company in 1841, he sent for his family. His wife, supposing him dead, had remarried, but his two daughters, one of whom had been born after his departure, joined him early in 1844. After the conquest the influx of settlers caused him heavy losses, but by 1855 he had recovered much of his property. At his hospitable residence many visitors were entertained, and his later days were passed in serene contentment. He died at his home.
Nominally a Catholic, Yount was also a Mason; he was buried with full Masonic honors; an Episcopalian minister preached his funeral sermon, and his will provided for the erection of a church to be used by all denominations.
In 1818 George married Eliza Cambridge Wilds, daughter of a well-to-do settler from Kentucky. They had two daughters. His wife, supposing him dead, had remarried later and he then married Mrs. Gashwiler, a woman of cultivation and charm.
