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 knowledge learned from many Native American tribes he encountered in his younger years. By his natural talents and those early skills, he became one of the most dramatic and important figures of the American West, serving as a frontiersman, trapper, scout, guide, transcontinental courier, U.S. Brigadier General, Indian Agent, husband, and father. In the 1840s he joined explorer John C. Frémont on several expeditions to map western lands that would become California and Oregon, and his success on those expeditions brought him national recognition. Familiar with the New Mexico Territory through extensive travels, Carson decided to settle in Taos in 1843, where he met Maria Josefa Jaramillo, daughter of a prominent Taos family. Kit and Maria Josefa married in February 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 and dictated reports imploring the U.S. government to honor all Indian treaties and provide tribal support. Kit and Josefa lived there with seven of their nine children until 1867, when the family moved to Colorado. In April 1868, Josefa died at age forty from complications of her last childbirth, and one month later Kit died from a burst aneurysm in his neck at age fifty-nine. They are buried in Taos.