P.D. Papin was a trusted and valued employee of the American Fur Company and its successors for over thirty years. He was born March 7, 1798, in St. Louis. The Papins were a prominent French merchant family in that city.
Papin joined "the Company" in the early 1820s and worked with its Upper Missouri Outfit headquartered in present-day South Dakota. Papin established his own trading company in 1829 but was soon bought out by the American Fur Company, which then rehired him. By 1842 Papin had moved to Fort John (popularly known as Fort Laramie) on the Laramie River and in 1845 became chief agent at that post. Meanwhile, the company had reorganized as Pierre Chouteau Jr. & Co., but operations remained essentially unchanged.
On June 15, 1846, Papin was met by Francis Parkman on the Platte River in Nebraska while enroute to St. Louis with a load of fur.
"The boats, eleven in number, deep-laden with the skins, hugged close to the shore. . . .Papin sat in the middle of one of the boats, upon the canvas that protected the cargo. He was a stout, robust fellow, with a little gray eye, that had a peculiartly sly twinkle. . . .I shook hands with the bourgeois, and delivered the letter: then the boats swung around in the stream and floated away."
Upon arrival in St. Louis the company granted Papin a partnership. In 1848 while in St. Louis he refused to return to Laramie and was succeeded at that post by Andrew Drips. However, by 1851 Papin was back on the frontier and still with "the Company".
In 1849 Fort Laramie was purchased by the U.S. Army and Drips established a company trading post here in Helvas Canyon. Papin was at this post with the company's Fort John Outfit when he died in May 1853. He was buried here, his grave marked by a large cedar cross.
Papin was survived by his wife, Catherine, and four children. There were twenty-six grandchildred.
Research by William A. Goff, Kansas City, Mo.

    Many Forty-niners recorded seeing the grave of one F. Dunn, age 26, who died June 13, 1849.  A headstone placed by members of his wagon train marked the gravesite.  Scottsbluff historian Thomas Green wrote that the headstone and grave still existed as late as the mid-1920s, but apparently the stone disappeared soon thereafter, and the exact site of the grave was lost.  Green said that it was near the current boundary fence and fifteen or twenty feet down the slope from the trail, about 540 feet south-southeast from the site of this marker.  The current concrete cross with the wooden plaque near the county road denoting it as the Dunn grave was placed in the 1980s and has become accepted as the exact site of the grave, but it is not.
    Fleming Dunn was born in Brown County, Ohio, September 21, 1822.  His parents were Ferrell and Lydia Dunn, natives of Virginia.  Lydia's maiden name was Fleming from which came Dunn's first name.  He was the second of five children.
    About 1831 the Dunn family moved to Illinois and after living fro a few years int he Danville area, they settled in Bureau County near the village of Tiskilwa.  Fleming Dunn grew up on the family farm in Indiantown Township.  On January 23, 1844, he and nineteen-year old Cordelia Eliza Spalding, a native of Towanda, Pennsylvania, were married.  They had two daughters, Alice, who was born in 1844, died when she was just a year old. Carassa, named for her grandmother Carassa Spaulding, was born December 12, 1847.
    In 1849 Fleming Dunn and his brother Ellis joined a company of Peoria area men who called themselves "the Peoria Pioneers."  When they got to Fort Laramie a member of the company, Charles Hinman, wrote in a letter to his wife: "Have turned our Waggon over once and broke 3 bows, 2 stakes and my Rifle.  It was close by an Indian Traders and Black smith shop, and it happened one of our company was taken with the cholera at the same time, which caused us to camp and during the afternoon we had every thing in repair.  The man died about 10 o'clock the same night (last Thursday).  We buried him at 8 o'clock the next morning with as much decency as if he had been in the States, put a sand stone up with his name, age, & c. cut on it and left him.  He was a young man and left a Wife and one child in Indian Town, Ill.  His name was Dunn."
    Hinman's diary entry for June 13, is slightly different: "Traveled 8 miles to a Spring Trading House and Blacksmith Shop, here in crossing the ravine of the Spring we turned our Waggon over and Broke 3 Bows 2 stakes and my Rifle [blot] man by the name of Dunn (from Indian Town) who had been unwell for Some days was taken with Cholera, and died at 10 oclock at Night, we bought 3 Bows of the Blk Smith made new tenons to our Stakes and was ready to Start.  But Dunn grew worse and it was though[t] best to camp over night - We had two Phisitons [physicians] but they could not Save him he has left a Wife and Child."
    On the day of Dunn's burial, June 14th, diarist Charles Parke wrote: "We found a beautiful and refreshing spring at the base of Scott's Bluff from which our water casks were filled.  Near this spring was a fresh grave, made this morning.  Dunn was the name, Died of cholera."
    Later Hinman added some details about the death of Fleming Dunn that illustrate the effects of cholera.  "Our man that died walked 8 miles and had 15 operations of the bowels before he took medicine and then it was too late and he lived but 12 hours after he made his situation known.  He has a Brother and an Uncle in our company."  The uncle who was on the trail with Fleming and Ellis can be identified as Matthias Fritchie, husband of Ferrell Dunn's sister Elizabeth.
    The Dunns were an ill-starred family.  In November, Ellis Dunn died in California, and on August 12, about two months after the death of her father, eighteen-month-old Carassa Dunn died of Cholera at their home in Illinois.  A month later Fleming Dunn's widow Cordelia died of dysentery.  A headstone in the Tiskilwa, Illinois, cemetery marks the grave of Cordelia and her two children.  The name and date of "Fleming Dunn, Husband of Cordelia E., died June 13, 1849," also appear on the headstone inscribed as if he is bured there with his family.

Oregon-California Trails Association - 2018