Meriwether Lewis

Meriwether Lewis (August 18, 1774 – October 11, 1809) was an American explorer, soldier, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Corps of Discovery, whose mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

Life

Meriwether Lewis was born near Charlottesville, in Albemarle County, Virginia, to William and Lucy (née Meriwether) Lewis, and was of Welsh ancestry. He moved with his family to Georgia when he was ten. At thirteen, he was sent back to Virginia for education by private tutors. One of these was Parson Matthew Maury, an uncle of Matthew Fontaine Maury. Parson Maury was a son of Reverend James Maury, who was Thomas Jefferson 's teacher for two years. In the 1790s, Lewis graduated from Liberty Hall Academy in Lexington, Virginia (now Washington and Lee University), joined the Virginia militia and in 1794 was sent as part of a detachment involved in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion. In 1795, he joined the regular Army, in which he served until 1801, at one point in the detachment of his future associate William Clark. He achieved the rank of Captain.

He was appointed private secretary to President Thomas Jefferson in 1801. Originally, he was to provide information on the politics of the United States Army, which had seen an influx of Federalist officers as a result of John Adams' Midnight Appointments. He later became intimately involved in the planning of the expedition and was sent by Jefferson to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for instruction in cartography and other skills necessary for making scientific observations. Lewis departed Pittsburgh for St. Louis--the capital of the new Louisiana Territory--via the Ohio River in the summer of 1803, gathering supplies, equipment, and personnel along the way.

Between 1804 and 1806, the Corps of Discovery explored thousands of miles of the Missouri and Columbia River watersheds, searching for an all-water route to the Pacific Ocean. Sharing leadership responsibilities with William Clark, Lewis led the expedition safely across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific and back, with the loss of a single man--who died of apparent appendicitis. In the course of the journey, Lewis observed, collected, and described hundreds of plant and animal species previously unknown to science. The expedition was the first point of Euro-American contact for several Native American tribes; through translators and sign language, Lewis conducted rudimentary ethnographic studies of the peoples he encountered, even as he laid the groundwork for a [trade economy] to ensure American hegemony over its vast new interior territory. ^[1]

On August 11, 1806, near the end of the expedition, Lewis was shot in the hip by Pierre Cruzatte, a near-blind man under his command. His wound hampered him for the rest of the journey.^[2]

After returning from the Expedition, Lewis received a reward of 1,500 acres (6 km²) of land. In 1807, Jefferson appointed him governor of the Louisiana Territory; he settled in St. Louis.

He was a member of the Freemasons. On August 2, 1808, Lewis and several of his acquaintances submitted a petition to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in which they requested a dispensation to establish a lodge in St. Louis. Lewis was nominated and recommended to serve as the first Master of the proposed Lodge, which was warranted as Lodge No. 111 on September 16, 1808. Here his heavy drinking persisted.[1]

He died of two gunshot wounds in 1809 at a tavern called Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles (110 km) from Nashville, Tennessee, on the Natchez Trace, while in route to Washington; he had been shot in the head and chest. Whether his death was from suicide or murder has never been conclusively determined. But it was reported that he was extremely depressed and had attempted to jump into the Mississippi River shortly before his death.

Although Lewis died without legitimate heirs, the LEWIS Surname DNA Project does have the putative DNA modal haplotype for his paternal ancestors' lineage, which was that of the Warner Hall Lewises. He was related to George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and Queen Elizabeth II, among others. ^[3] Lewis never married due to his shy personality.

The explorer was buried not far from where he died. He is honored today by a memorial along the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Legacy

For many years, Lewis's legacy was overlooked, inaccurately assessed, and even tarnished by his alleged suicide. Yet his contributions to science, the expansion of the American Empire, and the lore of great world explorers, are incalculable.^[4]

Several years after Lewis's death, Thomas Jefferson wrote

Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction, ... honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves, with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him.^[5]

• Jefferson also stated that Lewis had a "luminous and discriminating intellect."

"The alpine plant Lewisia (family Portulacaceae), popular in rock gardens, is named after Lewis, as is Lewis's Woodpecker. Geographic names that honor him include Lewis County, Tennessee; Lewisburg, Tennessee;Lewiston, Idaho; and the U.S. Army installation Fort Lewis, Washington. In 1941, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Meriwether Lewis was launched. She was torpeoded and sunk in 1943.

Notes

1. ^ Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. Simon & Schuster: 15 February 1996. ISBN 0-684-81107-3.
2. ^ Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose, pg.385
3. ^ Moses, Grace McLean. The Welsh Lineage of John Lewis (1592-1657), Emigrant to Gloucester, Virginia. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2002
4. ^ Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. Simon & Schuster: 15 February 1996. ISBN 0-684-81107-3.
5. ^ Jefferson, Thomas, Paul Allen, 18 August 1813, in Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents: 1783–1854, edited by Donald Dean Jackson. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962, pp. 589–590.

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