Clark writes his brother Jonathan from Fincastle, Virginia, where they are visiting Julia's family, regarding the death of Meriwether Lewis, information he has received from the commander of Fort Pickering at the Chickasaw Bluffs, Gilbert Russell, who provides details of Lewis's condition and situation while there, and what he has learned from Lewis' servant John Pernier about Lewis's mental state.
Mourning necklace belonging to Ann Booth Gwathmey. Women experienced death and loss regularly on the frontier. They often expressed their grief by wearing mourning jewelry. Ann Gwathmey experienced death many times throughout her life. She married Jonathan Clark Gwathmey in 1800 when she was eighteen years old, and he was twenty-six. She was nineteen years old when she gave birth to their first daughter, who died less than six weeks later. During the next twenty-five years, Ann lost both of her parents, two more pre-school aged children, and her husband. In her senior years, two of her adult children preceded her in death.
Daniel Chapman Banks was a Louisville Presbyterian minister. The diary chronicles his 1815-1816 trip from Connecticut to Louisville in which he travels through New Yok, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. This diary entry describes the death of a woman's baby.
