Biographical Sketch of Charles L. Des Combes, Johnson County, Missouri
Post Oak Township
>From "The History of Johnson County, Missouri," 
Kansas City Historical Co. 1881

CHARLES L. DES COMBES,

The world furnishes men of every type and character.  Some have breadth
and liberality of mind, others never perceive that which is beyond their
own narrow sphere of operations, and they never go beyond the
neighborhood in which they were born.  To the mind that never
experiences the educating influences of new and strange surroundings a
great part of life's joy and satisfaction is lost.  Few men, indeed,
among the quiet farmers of our rural districts, have passed through the
perils by land and the perils by sea, the joys and sorrows, the success
and adversity, which has fallen to the lot of Charles L. Des Combes.  He
was born January 6, 1806, in the Canton of Neuchattel, Switzerland, the
son of David L. Des Combes, who died in St. Louis county, this state.
At the age of fourteen he came with his parents to America, embarking
from Holland, and touching on the south shore of Greenland, thence
through Hudson's Bay to the mouth of Nelson river.  Here they
disembarked and proceeded up the river by means of boats until they
reached lake Winnepeg, thence proceeding up the Red River of the North,
sometimes rowing up the current of streams and across lakes, then
hauling the boat after them across a "carry" to the next body of water,
and thus proceeding until they were far in the wilds of the northern
wilderness.  Here the family remained one summer and two frozen winters,
subsisting a portion of the time on dried buffalo meat procured from the
savages, and fish which they took from the river after having cut
through ice from six to eight feet in thickness.  Dissatisfied, they
determined to proceed south into the United States.  Accordingly, in the
spring of 1823, they started on their perilous journey through the
trackless forest, sometimes by river and sometimes by land, till they
reached the source of St. Peter's river.  At this point the father cut
down a large tree and made a canoe in which the family proceeded until
they reached Fort Snelling, destitute of the necessaries of life.  When
the youthful Des Combes was presented a loaf of bread by the garrison of
the fort, he threw up his arms in joyful glee and exclaimed: "Thank the
Lord, here is bread once more." They proceeded down the Mississippi
River and settled at St. Louis when the great metropolis was scarcely
larger than Warrensburg.  He married Martha A. Wash on the sixth day of
April, 1837, and the following are the names of the children, five of
whom are still living: Thomas L., Mary L., Adelia A., Charles E.,
William F., Virginia E., Rachel R., Martha Day, John N., Susan Rand,
Eugene.  When Mr. Des Combes first came to Post Oak township, in 1856,
his present well cultivated farm was an open prairie, without tree or
fence.  His farm consists of about 500 acres of fine land, well fenced,
with orchards and groves, large and elegant house and barns, all of
which have been the result of his own labor and enterprise.  Mr. and
Mrs. Des Combes, though well advanced in years, enjoy reasonable good
health, and have the satisfaction of seeing their children grow up to
honor and usefulness.  To give one-half of the history of this eventful
life would require a volume in itself, and to do justice to such a
subject would overstep the limits of time and space intended in this
work.  We cannot, however, refrain from recording the facts that C.L.
Des Combes became a member of the Old School Presbyterian church before
he left Switzerland, and has been a member since that date.  His wife is
a member of the Methodist Episcopal church south, having been received
into that religious organization in September, 1832, while living in
Virginia.  One of his sons, Charles E., lives in Georgia; he was a
soldier in the confederate army, and served under Gen. F.M. Cockrell.
The vessel which brought the Des Combes family from Europe to America
was three months on the voyage to the mouth of Nelson river, and three
months more were consumed in the journey up the river to their first
settlement, on the Red River of the North.  Mr. Des Combes, in 1850,
made a trip to California, crossing the plains, and returning by way of
the isthmus and New York city.  During fifty-two years of ceaseless
activity, as a man delighting in manual labor, he knew not a day's
sickness, though the weight of years is perceptible in his weakening
frame.

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