Cerán St. Vrain, a close associate of Charles Bent and Kit Carson, ranks as a major figure in 19th-century New Mexican history. Yet today, he is unrecognized and his absorbing story goes unsung.

The grandfather of Cerán was a French-speaking nobleman who served as King Louis XIV's treasurer. Revolution forced him to flee the country with his family and settle in the wilds of France's Upper Louisiana colony.

Cerán St. Vrain was born into a French-speaking community in 1802 near St. Louis. After the death of his father, he was sent as a youth to live with Bernard Pratte Sr., head of a major fur-trading company.

In his early 20s, St. Vrain made his first trip to New Mexico as a merchant, carrying goods bought on credit from Pratte. He earned enough to keep him in that business for the next three decades.

In 1826, the young man, along with 35 other Americans, applied for travel permits to undertake a trading and trapping expedition to Sonora, below the Gila River. The papers were issued by New Mexico Gov. Antonio Narbona.

The permit handed to St. Vrain showed his name, as Hispanicized by a clerk, to be Serán Sambrano. Thereafter, he was known to New Mexicans as Señor Sambrano.

The Sonora trip indicates that St. Vrain was on his way to becoming a full-fledged mountain man as well as a merchant. The following year, 1827, he participated in a nine-month trapping expedition northward to the Platte River and then west to the Green River.

S.S. Pratte, a kinsman of St. Vrain's old St. Louis benefactor, led the party. Along the way, the leader was bitten by a mad dog and soon died in agony from the infection. A grieving St. Vrain sat by his side until the end. Against his wishes, he was voted by the men to become their new leader.

Over the next several years, St. Vrain divided his time between selling imported goods in Santa Fe and Taos and trapping beaver. He established a residence in Taos, became a naturalized citizen of Mexico (whose territory then extended north to the Arkansas River), and got married to a local girl. He also mastered the Spanish language.

In addition, he began to develop a large Mexican land grant. Known as the Vigil and St. Vrain grant (also called the Las Animas grant), it had been awarded by Gov. Manuel Armijo. The tract sprawled across 4 million acres in southeast Colorado.

Around 1832, St. Vrain formed a partnership with another trader, Charles Bent, also from St. Louis. Bent, St. Vrain & Co., in the words of historian Hiram Chittenden, "became one of the most important fur-trading firms in the West."

The following year, the partners built Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River, near modern La Junta, Colo. Although they had stores in Santa Fe and Taos, the fort, which purchased furs from mountain men and buffalo robes from Plains Indians, became the headquarters of their mercantile empire.

St. Vrain spent most of his time there, dressed in a frock coat and tie, keeping the firm's books. But he switched to fringed buckskins when going forth to deal with the trappers.

Early 1847 saw the killing of Charles Bent in the bloody Taos disturbances. St. Vrain happened to be in Santa Fe and accompanied the army that put down the uprising. Afterward he served as the interpreter for some of the rebels who were placed on trial.

Bent, St. Vrain & Co. dissolved and with New Mexico now in American hands, St. Vrain entered upon a series of diverse ventures that would make him a wealthy man.

Initially, he sold off pieces of the huge land grant, his partner Corelio Vigil having perished at Taos along with Bent.

Then he got interested in milling and built the first grist mill in the Taos Valley, and others in Mora, Santa Fe and Peralta, below Albuquerque. By selling flour to the new army garrisons at Fort Union and Fort Craig, he made enormous profits.

For the rest, Señor Sambrano invested in sawmills, became involved in banking projects and early railroad speculation, and owned a share of the capital's Santa Fe Gazette. For a time he dabbled in territorial politics.

The last years of his life were spent in Mora in an adobe house with a placita, located in the center of town. A block away one can see the imposing shell of his stone grist mill, the only one he built that is still standing.

St. Vrain's grave is on the edge of town in a small family cemetery. He died at home on Oct. 28, 1870, having been a participant in much of New Mexico's stirring history of the 19th century.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.