George C. Yount: California pioneer from Cape County

One of the first American settlers in northern California spent his formative years in Cape Girardeau County. The man is a legend, partly because he was a pioneer, but also because of a memoir that has quite a few claims about his life. In this account I've tried to include only verified information.

George C. Yount was born in North Carolina May 4, 1794, probably son of Jacob Yount. Jacob and family came to Missouri in about 1808. The Younts settled in the German Settlement on and near Whitewater River. This area is in present-day Bollinger County, but was Cape Girardeau County until 1851. George claimed to have served in the War of 1812 in the Missouri Rangers, but there were two George Younts in Missouri at that time, making his service unclear. If he did serve, it was under Abraham Dougherty. He either returned home only briefly or never returned, possibly taking up a life of Indian fighting, trapping and trading. A George Yount, possibly George C., sold his claim to the land of Jacob Yount to John Yount in 1820 in Cape Girardeau County (Deed Book F, page 88).

After the War of 1812, Yount went further west to Howard County, Missouri. At that time, Howard County included much of northwest-central Missouri. He purchased the preemption right (squatter's right) to land near Sulphur Lick in 1817. However, Yount never completed the process to receive the land. George married Eliza Wilds in Howard County on Oct. 18, 1818. He apparently did have possession of 160 acres in Howard County at one time, which he mortgaged (along with two copper stills) to pay off a $200 debt co-signed by his father-in-law Robert Wilds in 1824.

Yount later claimed a neighbor to whom he had entrusted his money stole it, and he had to return to trading and trapping to make a livelihood. He claimed to have set out for Santa Fe, and did haul freight on the Santa Fe Trail. He left his family permanently in about 1827. Although he later claimed he and Eliza agreed and he left what he had with the family, she initiated divorce proceedings in 1829. Eliza claimed George had "...willfully deserted and absented himself [from her] without any reasonable cause, for the space of two years..." The court granted the divorce on July 10, 1830.

George trapped in New Mexico and Arizona, and later he claimed he joined the expedition of William Wolfskill to California. While this is unconfirmed, he was in California by 1831, when he converted to Catholicism and adopted the Spanish name Jorge Concepci--n. He became a Mexican citizen and received a land grant, Caymus Rancho, in the Napa Valley in 1836.

When the first American immigrants arrived in 1841, he sent for his children. His daughters arrived in 1843, but his son had apparently never forgiven him and stayed in Missouri. George remarried in 1855 and died at his home at Yountsville, California, Oct. 5, 1865.