Lewis arrives in the new Federal District to find Jefferson’s already left. However, the two eventually settle into this first year – and receive a visit from an old friend.

/ 38° 53′ 52″ N, 77° 2′ 10″ W

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After William left the military, he tended to his family — namely, his older brother, George Rogers’, dire financial straits. In addition to addressing lawsuits from Humphrey Marshall, Captain William Shannon and Laurent Bazadone, William travels to St. Louis for the first time (as well as tease his 1798 trip to New Orleans, which will feature heavily in a future Mile Marker).

/ 37° 58.752′ N, 90° 2.81′ W.

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This episode follows Meriwether Lewis from William’s retirement after the council at Greenville to his receiving an invitation from President Jefferson to be his personal secretary. There’s a sketch of Lewis’s rather extensive travels, along with my trying to pin down more details on Lewis’s involvement near the end of 1797 at Chickasaw Bluffs.

/ 42° 19.647′ N, 83° 2.875′ W.

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/ 40° 6′ 18″ N, 84° 37′ 56″ W

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As James O’Fallon noted to Jonathan Clark: “Yr. Brother, William is gone out, as a cadet, with Genl. Scott, on the Expedition. He is a youth of solid & promising parts, and as brave as Caesar.” This entry follows William from 1791 to the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the march back to Fort Greenville.

/ 41° 5′ 0″ N, 85° 7′ 32″ W

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“his talent for observation, which had led him to an accurate knoledge of the plants & animals of his own country, would have distinguished him as a farmer,” Jefferson eulogized after Meriwether’s death, “but at the age of twenty, yielding to the ardor of youth, & a passion for more dazzling pursuits, he engaged as a volunteer in the body of militia which were called out by Genl Washington on occasion of the discontents produced by the Excise-taxes in the Western parts of the United States; and from that situation he was removed to the regular service as a lieutenant in the line.”

/ 40° 19′ 12″ N, 80° 0′ 23″ W

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Lewis wrote, “The general idea is that the army is the school of debauchery but believe me it has ever proven the school of experience and prudence to your affectionate son.” But setbacks in the west, Congressional hearings would be be heard and organizations would be reorganized. Conventions would be convened and proclamations proclaimed. In the interim, between the pivotal year of 1794, Clark joins the army as a continuation of a world knew while Lewis gave up the day-to-day responsibilities at home to for a chance at study at the school of experience.

/ 40° 24′ 47″ N, 84° 46′ 32″ W

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While it would be easy (and materially correct) to say William (and his siblings) didn’t have the “formal” education of Jonathan or George Rogers, i.e. there was no Donald Robertson in an outpost like Louisville where teachers like him and learning materials — the philosophies, the classical histories, the scientific textbooks, the essays, as well good paper and pencils — were quite limited, the Clark household was still a place of learning, “formal” and “frontier.”

The reason the Clark’s eschewed “formal” education stems (at least a bit) on the economic reality of sending all their children away (as they did with Jonathan and George Rogers). With less children and in a less remote location, Lewis would obtain, like Jonathan and George Rogers, the more formal, broad Enlightenment, education through out a series of teachers, “impoverished divines,” in David Lavender’s words.

/ 38° 12′ 59″ N, 85° 43′ 42″ W

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Around the same time as the Lewises joined the Virginia planer-elite to Georgia, the Clark’s joined the Virginia planter elites in Kentucky. Unlike Georgia, which was one of the thirteen colonies (though sparsely populated by white Europeans), Kentucky fell beyond the old Proclamation of 1763, the boundary line devised after British victory in the French and Indian War. It’s story will be told as we continue over the mountains but, like Matthew’s inviting picture of what Georgia might be, the land schemes between the wars led American colonists pouring into the Ohio Valley, ratcheting up tensions that boiled over into Revolution.

/ 33° 59′ 10″ N, 83° 8′ 0″ W

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“The day is ours!” shouted Captain Charles Fordyce, moments before his charge, moments before he and twelve privates were slain by Patriot gunfire at Great Bridge, Virginia. Months before, Virginia’s governor, Lord Dunmore had sailed out of Williamsburg to Norfolk, after which he pleaded for troops to quell the rebellion brewing throughout the state.

The years of 1776 to 1783 would be seismic for the young men, in particular, encompassing for Clark ages 6 to 13, for Lewis 2 to 9. These were young boys coping with a world at war and, for each of them, their family joining the fight. Today we explore a bit of the Revolution in Virginia.

/ 38° 3.435′ N, 78° 35.847′ W.

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/ intro/outro by aldous ichnite — “You'll Have a Plan Before You Try to Get Your Horse on the Trailer” and “Our Entire Bodies Have Always Been the Most Powerful Form of Visual Expression”

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