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THE PATHFINDER: JOHN CHARLES FREMONT

© John S. Cooper

John Charles Fremont can claim several firsts as a presidential candidate. He was the first western candidate, coming from California less than six years after it became a state. He was also the first Republican Party candidate. But his biggest first is that he was the first, and only, illegitimate child to be nominated for the presidency by a major party.

Fremont's mother was Ann Beverly Whiting, the daughter of a very respected Virginia family who had fallen on hard times. She married John Pryor, a man old enough to be her grandfather. It was not a happy marriage, and she left Pryor to live with Charles Fremont, a French immigrant teaching at a private school in Richmond. John Charles was the first of three children born to this illicit relationship.

They moved to Nashville to get a new start. Their first night in Nashville, they stayed at the Nashville Inn. In a coincidence of fate, that same night future President Andrew Jackson and future Senator Thomas Hart Benton had their famous brawl in the lobby and bar of the Nashville Inn. Using a bullwhip, knives and pistols, they destroyed the bar and lobby as well as nearly killing each other. Benton put a pistol ball into Jackson's shoulder. One of Benton's stray shots went through the room occupied by the Fremonts. The shot just missed the sleeping John Charles, whose mother fainted. His father went into the midst of the fight, screaming at the two participants who had almost killed his baby. Oddly enough, the man who almost killed baby John Charles Fremont was his future father-in-law, Thomas Hart Benton.

When Fremont was only five, his father died. His mother moved the family to Charleston, South Carolina, where she had relatives and where no one knew of their family secret. Fremont entered a circle of wealthy friends and received a good education. After graduating from Charleston College, he became a teacher.

In 1835, Fremont took a job working with the surveyors of a railroad line from Charleston to Cincinnati, Ohio. For the entire summer, he lived outdoors with both white settlers and Indians. This adventure set the tone for the rest of his life. The next year, he joined a survey crew that established the common boundaries of North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.

Fremont next worked for Joseph Nicolas Nocolett, a famous French scientist and explorer. Over the next several years, Fremont gained from Nicolett the experience and scientific training to lead his own surveying expeditions. As he climbed the official ladder in the United States Coastal Survey, he met many important people, including his future father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton. He also met Benton's daughter Jessie.