are not deemed sufficiently interesting to occupy the public attention;
but a general account of his parentage, with such smaller incidents as
marked his early character are briefly noted; and to these are added, as
being peculiarly within my own knowledge, whatever related to the public
mission, of which an account is now to be published. The result of my
inquiries and recollections shall now be offered, to be enlarged or
abridged as you may think best; or otherwise to be used with the
materials you may have collected from other sources.

Meriwether Lewis, late governor of Louisiana, was born on the eighteenth
of August, 1774, near the town of Charlottesville, in the county of
Albemarle, in Virginia, of one of the distinguished families of that
state. John Lewis, one of his father's uncles was a member of the
king's council, before the revolution. Another of them, Fielding Lewis,
married a sister of general Washington. His father, William Lewis, was
the youngest of five sons of colonel Robert Lewis, of Albemarle, the
fourth of whom, Charles, was one of the early patriots who stepped
forward in the commencement of the revolution and commanded one of the
regiments first raised in Virginia, and placed on continental
establishment. Happily situated at home, with a wife and young family,
and a fortune placing him at ease, he left all to aid in the liberation
of his country from foreign usurpations, then first unmasking their
ultimate end and aim. His good sense, integrity, bravery, enterprise,
and remarkable bodily powers, marked him as an officer of great promise;
but he unfortunately died early in the revolution. Nicholas Lewis, the
second of his father's brothers, commanded a regiment of militia in the
successful expedition of 1776, against the Cherokee Indians; who,
seduced by the agents of the British government to take up the hatchet
against us, had committed great havoc on our southern frontier, by
murdering and scalping helpless women and children, according to their