Robert Frazer
Private Robert Frazer served in the Corps of Discovery and kept a journal during the expedition, though it has never been found. He published a prospectus for his account in 1806, advertising a forthcoming book that never materialized. Frazer was among the members of the expedition who voted on the location of Fort Clatsop and participated in the full journey to the Pacific and back. His lost journal remains one of the tantalizing missing documents of American exploration history.
Biography
Robert Frazer (d. 1837) was a private who replaced Moses Reed after Reed’s desertion and discharge. Frazer kept his own journal during the expedition and, upon returning to St. Louis, announced plans to publish it — even issuing a prospectus before Lewis and Clark could publish theirs.
Lewis, concerned about being scooped, intervened to delay Frazer’s publication. The journal was never published during Frazer’s lifetime, and the original manuscript was eventually lost — one of the great literary losses of American exploration history. Only Frazer’s hand-drawn map, discovered in the Library of Congress in 1916, survives.
After the expedition, Frazer settled in the St. Louis area and lived until 1837. His lost journal remains one of the tantalizing what-ifs of Lewis and Clark scholarship.
Related Locations
Note: the longest gap between tagged appearances is about 9 months (Oct 8, 1804 → Jun 25, 1805). Robert Frazer may have been present in the corps during that span but is not named in the journals.
Journal Entries (48)
Cross-Narrator Analyses
Analyses that cite or discuss Robert Frazer — showing 3 of the most recent matches.
Foot Races, Fiddles, and a Warning About the Mountains
The expedition's Sunday at Camp Chopunnish, the so-called Long Camp on the Clearwater, was outwardly unremarkable: a hunter returned empty-handed, visitors arrived…
Painted Prairies and a Sunstruck Man: Four Pens on the Missouri
The journal entries for July 7, 1804 offer one of the clearest early demonstrations of how information moved among the expedition's writers.…
Charles Marion Russell: The Cowboy Artist and the Lewis & Clark Imagination
A Figure Outside the Journal RecordCharles Marion Russell is tagged in this project as a key figure associated with the Lewis and…
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