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MERIWETHER LEWIS: - Suicide Or Murder? - BIOGRAPHY

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Author Topic: MERIWETHER LEWIS: - Suicide Or Murder? - BIOGRAPHY  (Read 3124 times)
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Bianca
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« on: June 26, 2009, 10:30:12 am »









After returning from the expedition, Lewis received a reward of 1,600 acres of land. In 1807, Jefferson appointed him governor of the Louisiana Territory; he settled in St. Louis.

Lewis was a good administrator, but due to quarreling local political leaders, approval of trading licenses, land grant politics, Indian depredations, and a slow-moving mail system, it appeared that Lewis was a poor administrator who failed to keep in touch with his superiors in Washington.

Lewis was a Freemason, initiated, passed and raised in Door To Virtue Lodge No. 44 in Albemarle, VA, between 1796 and 1797.  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.

On September 3, 1809, Lewis set out for Washington D.C. to answer complaints about his actions as governor.

On the way, he stopped at an inn called Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles (110 km) from Nashville, Tennessee on
the Natchez Trace on October 10, 1809. Lewis requested a glass of whiskey almost as soon as he climbed down from his horse. After he excused himself from dinner, he went to his bedroom. In the predawn hours of October 11, the innkeeper heard gunshots. Servants found Lewis badly injured from multiple gunshot wounds. He died shortly after sunrise.

While modern historians generally accept his death as a suicide, there is some debate.  Mrs. Grinder, the tavern-keeper's wife, claimed Lewis acted strangely the night before his death. She said that during dinner Lewis stood and paced about the room talking to himself in the way one would speak to a lawyer. She observed his face to flush as if it had come on him in a fit. After he retired for the evening, Mrs. Grinder continued to hear him talking to himself. At some point in the night she heard multiple gunshots, and what she believed was someone asking for help. She claimed to be able to see Lewis through the slit in the door crawling back to his room. She never explained why, at the time, she didn't investigate further concerning Lewis's condition or the source of the gunshots. The next morning, she sent for Lewis's servants, who found him weltering in his blood but alive for several hours.

When Clark and Jefferson were informed of Lewis' death, both accepted it as suicide, but his family contended it was murder. In later years a court of inquiry explored whether they could charge the tavern-keeper with Lewis' death. They dropped the inquiry for lack of evidence or motive.

The explorer was buried not far from where he died, honored today by a memorial along the Natchez Trace Parkway. During a ceremony on Oct. 7, 2009, marking the 200th anniversary of his death, a bronze bust of Lewis will be dedicated to the Natchez Trace Parkway for a planned visitor center. The Meriwether Lewis Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation will host the event, called “Courage Undaunted—The Final Journey.”

On June 4, 2009, colleteral descendants of Lewis launched a Web site aimed at garnering public support for exhumation and scientific study of the explorer's remains to determine—once and for all—the cause of his death. The Web site is SolvetheMystery. The National Park Service, which controls the land where Lewis is buried, repeatedly has stalled the Lewis family's efforts to exhume the remains for scientific examination and to provide
a proper Christian reburial.
« Last Edit: June 26, 2009, 10:33:21 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.


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