Posted on 09/25/2010 1:18:49 AM PDT by Palter
Famous Explorer's Relatives Deny Suicide Talk, Seek to Dig Up Body
Meriwether Lewis conquered rivers, mountains and bears leading the Lewis and Clark Expedition across 8,000 miles of wilderness from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back.
Two centuries later, relatives of Mr. Lewis are having a tough time moving his remains down 80 miles of paved Tennessee highway from a national park to a forensic lab.
Mr. Lewis's body rests beneath a 20-foot-high stone monument at milepost 385.9 of the Natchez Trace Parkway. A plaque next to the gravesite states that it was here, in 1809, three years after his epic journey, that his life drew "mysteriously to its close."
Many historians believe Mr. Lewis, who was governor of the Louisiana Territory at the time of his death, committed suicide after wrestling with depression, drug addiction or some other malady. Others have speculated that he was murdered.
About 200 descendants have petitioned the federal government to dig Mr. Lewis up, hoping that modern science will exonerate a historical figure whose legacy they believe was tarnished by his ambiguous death.
"He could very well have become presidential material," asserts Howell Bowen, a 75-year-old nephew four generations removed, who grew up and lives in Mr. Lewis's hometown of Ivy, Va. He calls the suicide hypothesis preposterous.
A recent letter from the U.S. Department of the Interior turning down the exhumation request is just the latest in a string of rejections handed down to the Lewis family—all distant relatives of Mr. Lewis's sister Jane, because the explorer didn't marry or have children.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
/sarc
BTTT
Yep, it was pretty funny. He was a protege of the high powered Dem lobbyists/lawyers Brownstein and Farber. They thought he couldn't lose against Wayne Allard, the plain folks vet from Loveland. It was really fun when he beat the guy twice.
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