|
Dromo's Den
|
|
[Up] [Dromo's Den] Meriwether Lewis Biography LEWIS, Meriwether (1774–1809) An American explorer, born near Charlottesville, Va. He came of a well-known Virginia family, being a grandnephew of Fielding Lewis, who married a sister of George Washington, and inherited from his father a comfortable estate. At the time of the Whisky Rebellion in 1794 he gave up farming to join the forces which the government sent into western Pennsylvania, and at the close of the insurrection became an ensign in the regular army. Five years later he was promoted to the rank of captain and in 1801 became President Jefferson's private secretary. When in 1803 it was decided to send an exploring expedition into the Louisiana country, for which the United States was then negotiating with France, the President accepted the promptly offered services of his secretary. Lewis chose as his companion Capt. William Clark (q.v.), an old army friend. The party left the Mississippi in May, 1804, and proceeded up the Missouri to its headwaters, crossed the Great Divide, and, landing on one of the tributaries of the Columbia, followed it and then the Columbia to the Pacific. After a dreary winter on the coast they returned to the United States by much the same route, and reached St. Louis in September, 1806. (See Lewis and Clark Expedition.) As a reward for this service Congress granted Captain Lewis a tract of 1500 acres of land from the public domain, and in 1807 the President appointed him Governor of Louisiana Territory, the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase, with headquarters at the village of St. Louis. Here he soon proved himself an able administrator. In this latter work he was ably assisted by Captain Clark, who had been appointed Indian agent. His leisure moments were occupied with preparing for publication the account of his great journey; but this he was destined never to finish, for in 1809 he was called to Washington on business, and while on the way met his death mysteriously in the cabin of a Tennessee pioneer. For biographical sketches, consult the works given under Lewis and Clark. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 41. |