This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Hitchcock, Burrows, Wade, Carson, Cooper Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1783 Message Board Post: During her retirement, Mabel Bridges (4/6/1891 - 4/18/1976), using a card file, gathered notes on the earliest Fremont county pioneers. I'm copying the following from Mabel's notes: 1.-- 1839:Rufus Hitchcock, a trader who afterward became both notorious and obnoxious, came from Indiana 1839 (p. 509). Rufus Hitchcok, well educated, many accomplishments, wholly unprincipled, various charges made against him, and to avoid arrest he built a two-room cabin, one room on each side of the Iowa - Missouri line. When the Missouri sheriff came to arrest him he sat down in the Iowa room and coolly chatted with the sheriff for some time. Had several wives, one the divorced wife of his former partner Burras. They were the first white men in county after Cooper; their stock in trade mainly whiskey.--1881 History of Fremont county, page 521. N.B.: I don't know who wrote this for the 1881 history, but much of it would probably fall into the category of "wild tales of the frontier". Hitchcock had left Fremont county and was operating the hotel at Sutter's Fort in 1848 when gold was discovered there (one year before the gold rush of 1849). I have read court records for Holt and Atchison counties,. Missouri, and records for the sub-agency for the Pottawatamie Indians at the Council Bluffs, and did not find much substantiation whatsoever for most of these charges. A little, yes, but NOT any more than for many others! Consider, that the 1881 history was being written about 32 years after Hitchock had left the county, and one has to ask who was the person that dated back that far so as to possess a first-hand acquaintance with Hitchcock....Oh, yes, no whites were permitted by law to settle in Pottawatamie Indian Country without the government's permission.--W.F. 2.--Burrows, born in Indiana in 1834, came to Kansas City area in 1847 (sic) with his stepfather, Rufus Hitchcock. In April 1848, they started for California, for benefit of Mrs. Hitchcock's health. Hitchcock was engaged in the fur business, running what they then termed a trading post, buying furs from American and British fur companies, besides many tribes of Indians, and being intimately acquainted with many old hunters and trappers such as Kit Carson, deeply impressed with their stories of California and the Pacific Coast......Arrived at Sutter's Fort on Sept. 10, 1848. Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock kept hotel here that winter.--From narrative of Rufus G. Burrows in California State Library. N.B.: "Came to the Missouri river country in 1847" !!??-- Don't you believe it! The Pottawatamies had emigrated to Kansas by that date, and one can easily find prime sources which put Hitchcock in the Fremont county area a long time before then. Wasn't it Jefferson Wade who bought out Hitchcock?...As for having seen, known, Kit Carson, that could easily be true. Kit Carson had explored The West as a guide for the famous John Charles Fremont, and it isn't hard to show that Fremont was acquainted with the Fremont county area, back in the 1840's. Stephen Cooper had been employed by Fremont--in 1845--for the purpose of being aided in acquiring the best horses for use in the explorations.....For this Burrows manuscript, get on one of the search engines such as Yahoo, Altavista, and ask for Hitchcock or Burrows.--W.F.