Major General John C. Fremont Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

In the 1840s, John C. Frémont (1813-1890) led Congressionally-funded expeditions to survey the Oregon Trail, Oregon Territory and the Great Basin and Sierra Mountains to California. He grew wealthy during the gold rush of 1848 and became one of California's first two U.S. Senators (1850). In 1856, he became the first presidential nominee of the newly founded Republican Party, losing to Buchanan. In the Civil War, Frémont was appointed Major General by President Lincoln and briefly commanded the Western Department, removed from his post when he decided independently to emancipate all of Missouri's slaves (August, 1861). Ruined financially by bad investments - mostly railroad ventures - in the early 1870s, Fremont returned to politics as Governor of the Arizona Territory (1873-1883). Colonel John T. Fiala, a Hungarian-born military office who had fought in Kossuth's rebellion for an independent Hungary, helped organize German-Americans in the St Louis area to fight for the Union cause in 1861, and became a member of Fremont's staff. A surveyor, he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad after the war. Major Rombauer was Raphael G. Rombauer, the youngest of four Hungarian-American brothers serving in the Union army, rising to the rank of major in the 1st Illinois Light Artillery. An engineer, he was Superintendent of the Southwest Branch of the Missouri Pacific Railroad before founding his own mining company.