George C. Yount was born in Burke County, North Carolina, but grew up in Missouri. He fought in the War of 1812 and the Indian wars. Yount was a farmer but in 1826, after business difficulties, left his wife and three children in Missouri, and went to Santa Fe and became a fur trapper. Yount eventually made his way to California, arriving in 1831 with the Wolfskill party. He trapped sea otters on the Santa Barbara Channel Islands. He went to Sonoma in 1834, where he was employed as a carpenter by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Through the influence of Vallejo, Yount received the Rancho Caymusland grant in 1836, and became the first permanent settler in the Napa Valley. He built a cabin, or block-house and a grist-mill. In 1843 he received the Rancho La Jota land grant on Howell Mountain north of Rancho Caymus, where he built a saw-mill. George C. Yount received a US patent on both of these grants with a total of. A town known as Sebastopol was laid out on the property in 1855. However, a town in nearby Sonoma County had already laid claim to this name, and the town was renamed Yountville in 1867 after George Yount’s death. His estate remained mostly intact during his lifetime, and Yount died on his property in 1865 at the age of 71.
Family
George C. Yount and Eliza Cambridge Wilds had three children: Robert Wilds Yount, Frances Yount, and Elizabeth Ann Yount, and nine grandchildren. His nephew, Harry Yount, was a gamekeeper in Yellowstone National Park and is considered the first park ranger of the National Park Service.
Children
Yount had left his family in Missouri in 1826. His two daughters, Elizabeth Ann and Frances, along with her husband William Bartlett Vines, came west with the Walker-Chiles Party of 1843. They lived in George Yount's blockhouse on Rancho Caymus.
Grandchildren
George and Eliza had nine grandchildren: Elizabeth Yount, only child of Robert, married Thomas Lewis Rutherford in 1864. George Yount gave the couple in the northern part of Rancho Caymus as a wedding gift. Thomas Rutherford established himself as a grower and producer of high-quality wines during the late 1800s, and Rutherford, California is named for him. Children of Frances: Mary, Ellen and George Elizabeth Anne Davis, daughter of Elizabeth, married William Campbell Watson in 1864. Watson established and named Inglenook Winery. Georgina Frances Sullivan, daughter of Elizabeth, married John P. Jones in 1875.
