Too Many Captain Clarks

Churchill Clark and Peyton "Bud" Clark are both descendants of Captain William of Lewis and Clark fame. The pair crossed paths in Livingston, Montana, yesterday, exactly 200 years after their ancestor crossed the Yellowstone River there.

Both men, who are very distant relatives, have spent most of the past three years retracing the steps of their ancestor. They started out traveling together, but split up after a falling out. [Link]

Each man is part of a larger group commemorating the bicentennial of the expedition—Bud with Discovery Expedition, Churchill with Lewis and Clark Then and Now. An article last November at Willamette Week Online sought to explain the schism.

It seems somewhere in North Dakota, the modern-day Meriwether Lewis ditched the modern-day William Clark and took off in his own canoe with three men and a dog, assuming the name "Lewis and Clark Then and Now." [Link]

One of the men Lewis (a.k.a. Scott Mandrell) took off with was Churchill Clark, who had previously been relegated to the role of a lowly private. The promotion to captain must have come as a surprise to Churchill, given that his job prior to the expedition was "Karaoke operator."

Stone Suffers From Plaque Buildup

When Esther Duncan sees a problem, she fixes it. Even if the problem is carved into the 19th-century gravestone of someone she's not related to.

Duncan, a rural Mellott [Indiana] resident and member of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, gathered other area residents and officials Wednesday to call attention to the changes. Plaques on two sides of the grave marker have updated two historical details from the original etchings on the marker itself.

One of those is the removal of the middle initial "E" from the name of William Bratton, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition from start to finish, 1804-1806.

"I've had descendants tell me he never used the 'E' and to take it off. It might have been used initially to differentiate him from all the other Brattons (in the cemetery)," Duncan said. [Link]

Duncan also updated the date of death of Bratton's wife, from "Nov. 19, 1875" to "Feb. 13, 1875." It was determined that "the marker couldn't take re-etching," so new plaques were added instead.

Duncan's next project will be to chisel historically authentic smallpox scars onto the face of George Washington at Mount Rushmore.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

What Lewis and Clark Left Behind

From the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune of June 26, 2005:

Corps of Discovery descendants abound

By ERIC NEWHOUSE
Tribune Projects Editor

Darlene Fassler of Great Falls has known all her life that she was the great-great-great granddaughter of Pvt. Patrick Gass of Lewis and Clark Expedition fame.

But last summer at a family reunion in Astoria, Ore., Fassler discovered Gass had 1,061 descendants over nine generations.

"I met 167 relatives in one day," said Fassler, who also volunteers at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.

Fassler's not the only one with lots of famous relatives.

The members of the Corps of Discovery have thousands of descendants — both from their later lives and from sexual encounters during their passage two centuries ago, including many Native Americans with strong evidence of family ties.

The Clatsop Genealogical Society, a key repository of expedition records in Oregon, has identified 1,669 descendents of about half the expedition's 32 permanent members.

Many may not know of their heritage.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

I guess they'd try anything to win over the natives.