William Wells Bent

Background

William Bent was born on May 23, 1809, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, the son of Silas and Martha (Kerr) Bent and brother of Charles Bent.

Career

In his fifteenth year William appears to have been with a trapping expedition on the upper Missouri. From 1824, when with his brother and Ceran St. Vrain he trapped the upper Arkansas, the Colorado frontier was his home. Though the planning of Bent's Fort was predominantly the work of Charles, its building (1828 - 32) was mainly under his own direction. Owing to the long absences of the other partners he had most to do, moreover, with its management, and it was often, in his honor, called Fort William. He was the general director of the company, the vast business of which included the gathering of robes and peltries, the trading of goods to the Indians, the raising of horses and mules, and often the transportation of government supplies. He became the sole owner by the retirement of St. Vrain at about the end of 1848.

By this time, however, the fort had become associated in his mind with many distressing memories. The death of his brothers (Robert, who was killed by the Comanches in 1841; George, who died of consumption in 1846; and Charles, who was killed in the Taos uprising in 1847) and the death of his wife in 1847 preyed upon his mind and decided him to remove to other scenes. He offered to sell the fort to the government, but in the negotiations that followed the price offered was so low that he indignantly rejected it. He thereupon packed up all his possessions, and after his new wife, his children, his employees, and his stock had all been safely removed, he blew up the structure with gunpowder in 1849.

Thirty-eight miles downstream Bent built a new trading post. In 1859 he leased it to the government, whereupon it became the first Fort Lyon. In the same year he built a stockade at the mouth of the Purgatoire (Las Animas), took up land, and began ranching, though serving also for the year as an Indian agent. To the neighborhood, beginning with the fall of 1867, other settlers came, Kit Carson among them, and the town of Boggsville, named for a nephew of Bent's, was born. Here, in the frequent company of men whom he had known for many years, he spent his last days.

According to Sabin he died at the home of Judge R. M. Moore, his son-in-law. Perhaps no frontiersman of the trans-Mississippi West was more widely known. His reputation for probity and fair dealing equaled that of his two partners and could hardly have been greater. The tributes of respect paid to these three men have generally not discriminated among them: what has been given to one has been given to all. Yet it seems likely that William was regarded as the special friend and helper of the trapper and hunter, and it is certain that he held the confidence of the Indians to a degree unshared by any other trader.

Achievements

• William Bent was a successful fur trader who co-founded Bent's Fort and for many years was his manager. Later Bent founded Fort Lyon and built a stockade at the mouth of the Purgatoire and the town of Boggsville. William Bent was the first permanent white settler in Colorado and in later days came to be regarded as its most prominent citizen.

Connections

William Bent married Mis-Stan-Sta, a Cheyenne, in 1835. They had four children. She died in 1847. Then he married her sister - Yellow Woman. After the death of Yellow Woman, he married at Westport, in 1867, Adalina, the daughter of Alexander Harvey and a Blackfoot woman.

Father:

Silas Bent

Mother:

Martha (Kerr) Bent

Spouse:

Adaline (Harvey) Bent

Spouse:

Mis-Stan-Sta Bent

Spouse:

Yellow Woman

Brother:

Joseph Kilburn Bent

Brother:

Robert S. Bent

Brother:

Charles Bent

Brother:

George Bent

Brother:

Silas Bent

Brother:

Edward Bent

Brother:

John Bent

Sister:

Mary (Bent) Bean

Sister:

Dorcas (Bent) Carr

Sister:

Lucy (Bent) Russell

Sister:

Julia Ann (Bent) Boggs

Daughter:

Julia (Bent) Guerrier

Daughter:

Mary E. (Bent) Moore

Son:

George Bent