Meriwether Lewis comes home to Locust Hill where he is welcomed by his mother Lucy Marks, brother Reubin, and sister Jane. The news reaches Charlottesville about ten miles east.
According to the artist’s biography at the National Gallery of Art, John Toole was a distant relative of Thomas Jefferson.
Lewis Comes Home
[The Richmond Enquirer]
COMMUNICATION
On the 13th of this month, the citizens of Charlottesville received intelligence, that capt. Meriwether Lewis had arrived at his mother’s on his way to Washington: they had long determined, that his arrival among them should be greeted with those marks of respect, which he merits from every one; and which they, who had known him from childhood, were particularly anxious to pay.[1]Richmond Enquirer, 23 December 1806, page 3. Also in Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents: 1783–1854, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), … Continue reading
Lewis’s Childhood
In preparation for the first official edition of the expedition journals, publisher Paul Allen asked Thomas Jefferson for biographical information about Meriwether Lewis:
Monticello. Aug. 18. 1813.
Sir
Meriwether Lewis, late Governor of Louisiana, was born on the 18th of Aug. 1774. near the town of Charlottesville, in the county of Albemarle, in Virginia, of one of the distinguished families of that state . . . . Nicholas Lewis, the second of his father’s brothers . . . was also the guardian of Meriwether Lewis, of whom we are now to speak, and who had lost his father at an early age. he continued some years under the fostering care of a tender mother, of the respectable family of Meriwethers of the same county; and was remarkable even in infancy for enterprise, boldness & discretion.
Th: Jefferson[2]“Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen”, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0341-0002. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, … Continue reading
Notes
| ↑1 | Richmond Enquirer, 23 December 1806, page 3. Also in Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents: 1783–1854, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 692. |
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| ↑2 | “Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen”, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0341-0002. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 6, 11 March to 27 November 1813, J. Jefferson Looney, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 418–426.] |
Experience the Lewis and Clark Trail
The Lewis and Clark Trail Experience—our sister site at lewisandclark.travel—connects the world to people and places on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Discover More
- The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.
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