The Kit Carson Home and Museum

The Kit Carson Home and Museum. . , Christopher "Kit" Carson was born on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1809, in Richmond, Kentucky. He left home at an early age and became an adept trapper and scout using the knowledge he learned from the many Native American tribes he encountered in his younger years. By his natural talents and the skills he learned early on, Carson went on to become one of the most dramatic and important figures of the American West. He was a frontiersman, trapper, scout, guide, transcontinental courier, U.S. Brigadier General, Indian Agent, husband and father. In the 1840s Carson joined explorer John C. Frémont on several expeditions to map the western lands that would become California and Oregon. Carson's innate abilities in so many areas and his success with the Frémont expeditions gained him national recognition., Familiar with the New Mexico Territory via his extensive travels Carson decided to settle in Taos in 1843. Here he met a beautiful young Hispanic girl named Maria Josefa Jaramillo, daughter of the prominent Jaramillo family of Taos. Kit and Maria Josefa married in February of 1843 and for the next 25 years this traditional adobe dwelling was their home. As U.S. Indian Agent, Carson used one of the home's three rooms as his office, dictating reports imploring the U.S. government to honor all Indian treaties and provide tribal support. Kit and Josefa lived in this home with seven of their nine children until 1867 when the family moved to Colorado. In April, 1868, Josefa died at age forty of complications from her last childbirth. One month later Kit died from a burst aneurysm in his neck - he was fifty-nine. They are buried here in Taos., Caption The Carson Home in the 1860s, Visit the grave sites of Kit and Josefa a few short blocks from here in The Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery. , 113 Kit Carson Road, Taos, New Mexico 87571 , 575-758-4945 , kitcarsonmuseum.org