Milton Green Sublette (c. 1801–1837), was an American frontiersman, trapper, fur trader, explorer, and

mountain man A mountain man is an explorer who lives in the wilderness. Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through to the 1880s (with a peak population in the early 1840s). They were instrumental in opening up ...

. He was the second of five Sublette brothers prominent in the western fur trade;

William William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conq ...

Andrew Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s, it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in English-speaking countries. "Andrew" is frequently shortened to "Andy" or "Drew". The word is derived ...

, and Solomon. Milton was one of five men who formed the

Rocky Mountain Fur Company The enterprise that eventually came to be known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was established in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1822 by William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry. Among the original employees, known as "Ashley's Hundred," were Jedediah ...

to buy out the investment of his brother William L. Sublette, Jedediah S. Smith and Dave E. Jackson. Sublette injured his leg in an 1826 Indian battle in the American Southwest; it was slow to heal and repeatedly became seriously infected. After it was removed by a surgeon named Farrar in St. Louis in 1835 (most likely Dr. Bernard Gaines Farrar), he walked on a "cork leg" procured by Robert Campbell through his brother Hugh Campbell. Later, he rode in a Dearborn wagon, drawn by one mule, as he left the St. Louis area heading for the west. Later infections in the leg led to his early death at Fort John, on the Laramie River, now in Wyoming. In 1843, Solomon Sublette, while traveling with William D. Stewart and William L. Sublette's caravan, took a grave marker to Fort John and placed it on Milton's grave. Today, Milton's actual grave site is lost to us, due to the US Military placing a building over the site of Fort William's grave yard. Sublette was reported to be a man of dynamic and attractive personality, with a strong tendency toward impetuous action and speech. He was called "the Thunderbolt of the Rockies."

References

Sources

* Nunis, Doyce B. Jr., ''Milton G. Sublette'', featured in ''Trappers of the Far West'', Leroy R. Hafen, editor. 1972, Arthur H. Clark Company, reprint University of Nebraska Press, October 1983. * Utley, Robert M., ''A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific'', 1997, Henry Holt and Company. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sublette, Milton 1801 births 1837 deaths People from Somerset, Kentucky American fur traders Mountain men

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