William Clark
William Clark | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Explorer |
| Parent(s) | Ann Rogers John Clark |
William Clark (August 1, 1770 – September 1, 1838) was an American explorer who accompanied Meriwether Lewis on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
William Clark was born in Caroline, Virginia on August 1, 1770. He was the second-youngest of the ten children born to John and Ann Rogers Clark. When the Revolutionary War began, William Clark was the only male member of his family who did not go off to battle, as he was too young. When he was 12 he entered the Continental Army. His older brother George Rogers Clark rose to the rank of General in the Continental Army. George Rogers Clark spent most of the war deployed to the western frontier of the colonies, fighting a proxy war against Native American tribes that had been provoked by the British into fighting colonists.
After the Revolutionary War, the Clark clan moved to Beargrass Creek, near Louisville, Kentucky. They arrived in the spring of 1786, having traveled overland to the Ohio River Valley before completing the journey by boat.
Despite the family's status in colonial society, Clark did not have any formal education. His lack of standard instruction is most famously reflected in the somewhat inventive spelling he employed in the journals he kept throughout the journey to the Pacific Ocean that he undertook with Meriwether Lewis.
In 1789 William Clark enlisted in the Kentucky Militia, a local force that had been raised to fight attacks from Native Americans in the region. By 1792 the federal government joined in the effort to quell a Native American insurgency. Clark accepted a commission as a lieutenant in the regular army.
Lewis and Clark Expedition
William Clark left the army in 1796, returning to Mulberry Hill, his family plantation near Louisville. In 1803, he was asked by Lewis to share command of the newly-formed Corps of Discovery. Clark spent three years on the expedition, and although technically subordinate to Lewis in rank, he exercised equal authority at Lewis's insistence. He concentrated chiefly on the drawing of maps, the management of the expedition's supplies, and the identification of native plants and animals.
Indian affairs and war
Clark was appointed a brigadier general of the militia and made superintendent of Indian affairs in the Louisiana Territory in 1807. He set up his headquarters for this in St. Louis, Missouri. When the Missouri Territory was formed in 1813, Clark was appointed governor. During the War of 1812, he led several campaigns and he established the first post in what is now Wisconsin.
After the war, Clark returned to the administration of Indian affairs, employing various diplomatic and military measures in response to several uprisings in the area, such as the Black Hawk War. He also worked as a surveyor.
Clark married Julia Hancock on January 5, 1808, and had five children with her: Meriwether Lewis Clark (1809-1881) named after his friend Meriwether Lewis; William Preston Clark (1811-1840); Mary Margaret Clark (1814-1821); George Rogers Hancock Clark (1816-1858), named after her older brother; and John Julius Clark (1818-1831). After Julia's death in 1820, he married her first cousin Harriet Kennerly Radford and had three children with her: Jefferson Kearny Clark (1824-1900); Edmund Clark (1826-1827); and Harriet Clark (dates unknown; died as child). His second wife died in 1831. His stepdaugther Mary Radford married Stephen Watts Kearny
Clark died in St. Louis on September 1, 1838 and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, where a 35-foot (10.6 m) gray granite obelisk was erected to mark his grave.
Legacy
Although his family had established endowments to maintain his grave site, by the late 20th century the grave site had fallen into disrepair. His descendants raised $100,000 to rehabilitate the obelisk and celebrated the re-dedication with a ceremony May 21, 2004, on the bicentennial of the start of his famous expedition. The ceremony was attended by a large gathering of his descendants, reenactors in period dress, and leaders from the Osage Nation, and the Lemhi band of the Shoshone Native American people.
Clark was a member of the Freemasons. The records of his initiation do not exist, but on September 18, 1809, Saint Louis Lodge No. 111 issued a traveling certificate for Clark [1].
On January 17, 2001, in one of his last acts as President, Bill Clinton posthumously raised Clark's regular army rank to captain. Descendants of Clark were there to mark the occasion. [2]
The western American plant genus Clarkia (in the Evening primrose family Onagraceae), is named after him, as are the Western cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki) and Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), a large passerine bird, in the family Corvidae. Several states have named a county in his honor: Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, and Washington. He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Clarks River in western Kentucky is named for him. And at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, there is a Grade I race run each year in his honor called the Clark Handicap.