Phase 1: Planning & Preparation (1801-1804) Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Andrew Ellicott: America’s Premier Surveyor

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:14:16 +0000

Andrew Ellicott (1754–1820) was the foremost surveyor of the early United States. He completed the Mason–Dixon Line, ran the boundaries of nearly a dozen current and future states, surveyed the ground chosen for the new federal capital and carried Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for Washington forward, measured the height of Niagara Falls, and ran the southern boundary of the United States with Spanish Florida. This biography by Lorna Hainesworth follows his life and major surveys from the 1780s through his last boundary work and his years teaching mathematics at West Point, where students nicknamed him “Old Infinite Series.”

The expedition connection is direct. In April 1803, Meriwether Lewis traveled to Ellicott’s home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to learn celestial navigation and the practical field surveying he would need in the West, staying about three weeks. Ellicott — himself once a student of Robert Patterson, another of Lewis’s tutors — taught him to fix latitude and longitude with sextant and chronometer. Ellicott’s earlier mapping of the Ohio–Mississippi confluence also informed Nicholas King’s compiled map carried by the Corps of Discovery.

This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full article by Lorna Hainesworth is available at the source link.

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Difficulties Made Easy: A History of Travel Routes Between Baltimore and Cumberland

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:14:16 +0000

This study traces how the road network of the early republic was stitched together between Baltimore and Cumberland, Maryland — the privately financed turnpikes (the “pikes”) whose surfacing, grades, width, and stone mile-markers turned rough traces into dependable commercial roads. Lorna Hainesworth sets the turnpike era against the larger national anxiety, voiced by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, that the trans-Appalachian West might drift away from the seaboard states for want of an overland connection.

That anxiety is the throughline to Lewis and Clark. The same political drive to bind East and West — pressed by Jefferson’s treasury secretary Albert Gallatin — produced the National Road, which Jefferson signed into law in 1806, extending the improved corridor from Cumberland toward the Ohio River. The roads described here are the eastern arteries along which the expedition’s people, supplies, and correspondence moved.

This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full article by Lorna Hainesworth is available at the source link.

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Open a Wide Door, Make a Smooth Way: The Historic National Road

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:14:16 +0000

The National Road — the first federally funded highway, authorized under Thomas Jefferson in 1806 — ran from Cumberland, Maryland, across the Appalachians to the Ohio River and eventually deep into the Midwest. This history follows the corridor from its Native American and frontier precursors (Nemacolin’s Path and the routes of Thomas Cresap, Christopher Gist, George Washington, and Edward Braddock) through its construction, its golden age of taverns, tolls, and Conestoga traffic, its decline before the railroads, and its modern revival as an All-American Road.

For Lewis and Clark, the road matters as the realization of the East–West link Jefferson and Albert Gallatin pushed for in the very years of the expedition — and because its precursor, Braddock’s Road, was the route Meriwether Lewis himself took from Harpers Ferry to Pittsburgh in the summer of 1803.

This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full article by Lorna Hainesworth is available at the source link.

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Planning a Transcontinental Journey

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:14:16 +0000

While researching connections between Maryland and the Lewis and Clark story, Lorna Hainesworth turned up a June 6, 1803 letter from Meriwether Lewis to William Linnard, the Army’s military agent in Philadelphia — a document missing from Donald Jackson’s standard Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and overlooked by Ambrose, Cutright, and Dillon. The letter lays out, in exacting detail, how Lewis wanted his accumulated stores moved from Philadelphia and Harpers Ferry to Pittsburgh: the team and driver to hire, the route to follow, the schedule, the careful handling of his box of mathematical instruments, and how the expenses were to be accounted.

Read alongside four related 1803 letters (including the “Portable Soup” letter to General William Irvine), it reconstructs Lewis’s spring-to-summer travels and introduces the cadre of quartermasters, purveyors, and armory officers — Israel Whelan, Thomas Cushing, Joseph Perkins, George Ingels, and Irvine — who outfitted the expedition. The find reveals Lewis at his logistical best: not only an explorer, but a meticulous quartermaster and project manager.

First published in the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation’s journal, We Proceeded On (August 2009). This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full article is available at the source link.

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Wind-Bound Camp; Fur Traders Arrive by Canoe

Tue, 05 May 2026 13:46:58 +0000

ment all day, on account of a strong wind from the west. An
Indian man and a squaw came down the river with two canoes,
loaded with fur and peltry, and remained with us all night.
Some of our hunters went out and killed a deer.

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Treaty with the Seneca Nation of Indians, 1802

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:47:07 +0000

Treaty Provisions

Hunting, Fishing, Gathering

“… the right and privilege of encamping their fishing parties on the beach of said river for the purpose of fishing, which is the common right of both parties…” — (Seneca Nation of Indians)

Present-Day Tribes

Seneca Nation of Indians

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Treaty with the Kaskaskia, 1803

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:47:07 +0000

Land cession by the Kaskaskia. Region: Illinois 1. Covering 54 counties across IL. Associated dates: 1803-08-13, 1804-08-27, 1818-09-25.

Present-Day Tribes

Miami Tribe of Oklahoma
Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma

Citations

1 Hodge 661-62

Tiller 645

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Captains Select the Permanent Party for Pacific Journey

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:47:08 +0000

Final preparations intensified at Camp Dubois as departure day approached. Lewis and Clark reviewed the roster of the permanent party, making final decisions about which men would make the full journey to the Pacific.

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Clark Oversees Careful Loading of Three Expedition Vessels

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:47:08 +0000

The keelboat and two pirogues were loaded with supplies for the journey. Clark supervised the careful distribution of weight and the organization of cargo for quick access to essential items.

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Lewis Settles Final St. Louis Affairs Before Departure

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:47:08 +0000

Lewis attended to last-minute business in St. Louis while Clark continued organizing the camp for departure. The men were eager to begin after months of winter preparation.

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