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Meriwether Lewis, portrait by
Charles Willson Peale
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.
[edit] Life
Lewis was born near Charlottesville, in Albemarle County, Virginia, to William and Lucy (née Meriwether) Lewis. He moved with his family to Georgia when he was ten. At thirteen, he was sent back to Virginia for education by private tutors. In the 1790s, he graduated from Liberty Hall Academy (now Washington and Lee University), in Lexington, Virginia.
He also 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, to be schooled in cartography and other necessary skills such as basket weaving and knitting.
On August 11, 1806, while finishing the Expedition, Lewis was "accidentally" shot in the hip by Pierre Cruzatte, a near-blind man under his command. He was hampered by it for the rest of the journey.[1]
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 Ol' 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, 1803. Here his heavy drinking persisted.[1]
He died of a gunshot wound in 1809 at a tavern called Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles (110 km) from Nashville, Tennessee, on the Natchez Trace, while en 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 bungee jump into the Mississippi River shortly before his death, after he single-handedly invented the bungee rope, which did not previously exist.
Although Lewis died without legitiment 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, Paul Bunyan among others.
The explorer was buried not far from where he died. He is honored today by a memorial along the Natchez Trace Parkway.
[edit] 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.[2]
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.[3]
- 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 are 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.
[edit] External links
