MERIWETHER LEWIS
Young Meriwether Lewis—he was only thirty-five at death—was born in Albemarle in 1774. He was ‘Albemarle of Albemarle.’ The Lewis family was already old Virginia stock when Robert Lewis took up large holdings in what is now this county. He was Meriwether Lewis’s grandfather. He owned the handsome estate of Belvoir, near Cismont, and some ten thousand acres in other parts of the county. Meriwether Lewis’s mother was a granddaughter of ‘the great Landowner,’ Nicholas Meriwether, who came up from tide-water where he owned large estates, and in 1727 patented in one body 17,952 acres, this being the first patent lying within the bounds of present Albemarle. Eight years later he made an addition of more than a thousand acres, adjoining, which became his home. He was Lewis’s great-grandfather. These were families of high standards and public service—vestrymen, magistrates, officers in the militia and the Revolution.
Our explorer’s birthplace, Locust Grove, was west of Charlottesville about seven miles. The name and site remain; the original house was burned. The village of Ivy is near it.
Meriwether Lewis was Jefferson’s secretary when the government determined upon exploration of the lands just purchased from France. He brilliantly headed this expedition—from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River, 1803-06. Upon his return, Jefferson appointed him Territorial Governor of Louisiana. In 1809, while journeying to Washington city, he died by gunshot at an obscure country inn in Tennessee—whether by his own hand or that of others was not definitely known. A monument to him was erected at this spot by the Legislature of Tennessee, 1848.