1774-1809

Lewis & Clark.

The official leader of the epic Lewis and Clark Expedition, Meriwether Lewis has been called "undoubtedly the greatest pathfinder this country has ever known." Lewis was born to a Virginia planter family in 1774. His father, who had been an officer in the American Revolution, died when Lewis was five years old, and for a brief time he lived in Georgia when his mother moved there with her second husband.

After briefly assuming the management of his family's Virginia plantation, Lewis joined the state militia in 1794 to help put down the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. He continued his military career as an officer in the regular army, serving on the frontier in Ohio and Tennessee, and rising to the rank of captain by 1801, when he accepted an invitation from President Thomas Jefferson, an old family friend, to serve as his private secretary.

Jefferson seems to have selected Lewis for this.

They began to ascend the Rocky Mountains. By late September, they had crossed the Bitterroot Mountains, cold, wet, hungry and exhausted, and were taken in by the Nez Percé. They travelled down the Columbia River basin and reached the Pacific Ocean in November. Their spirits buoyed by success, they stayed the winter on the Pacific Coast and returned to the United States in 1806 over substantially the same route that had brought them West.

The Lewis and Clark expedition was as widely hailed upon its return as it is remembered in our own time, and as its official leader, Meriwether Lewis reaped the benefits of this acclaim. Jefferson appointed him governor of the Louisiana Territory, a post he assumed in 1808. During his brief time in this office, however, Lewis proved himself a poor administrator. He quarreled with the territorial secretary and local leaders, and failed to keep his superiors in Washington informed of his policies and plans.

In September 1809 Lewis set out for the nation's capital to answer complaints about his actions as governor, and on this trip died a violent but mysterious death in a tavern about 70 miles southwest of Nashville, Tennessee. Whether he committed suicide, as Jefferson believed, or was murdered, as his family maintained, remains uncertain even today.
HeritageQuest

JOHN BAMBER - a veteran of the Civil War and now an active member of the G. A. R. Thomas L. Cain post No. 12, Glendive, is one of the staunch representatives substantial agriculturistsof Dawson county. His fine farm of three hundred acres is just two miles north of Glendive. He recently sold a

section of land in this vicinity and still has one of the largest farms in the country. Bamber has led an eventful career and is now privileged to spend the golden years of his life in peace and plenty, having the solid comfort of knowing that he bravely assisted to fight the nation's battles and has won from nature his competence by honest labor.

John Bamber was born in Lancashire. England, Critchley, was born, lived and died in Lanca- shire, England, never traveling more than a few miles from his home place, Leland, which was six miles from Preston. His death was the result of an accident in 1871. he being then 52 yr. old. He was a direct de- scendant of the old Critchley family, one of whom was a general under James I. Our subject took the name of Bamber as his mother.

Mary Bamber, took her maiden name after he death of her husband. She died in Engladand in 1903 aged eighty-eight. John is the oldest of five children, two of whom are living,  his brother William being in Pennsylvania, having been employed for thirty-two years on the Pennsylvania Railroad. and he celebrated his twenty-first birthday on the ship coming to New York City. After landing he went direct to Long Beach, New Jersey, and one year later, went to Pittston, Pennsylvania, as a coal miner. He left this occupation to enlist in Company G, 20th Con- necticut volunteers, and in that capacity was with Sherman on his famous march to the sea.

Mr. Bamber was brought into very close re- ations with General Hooker, whom he knows well to have been both a general and a hero.

The excellent action of the general at the time of the siege won for him the w^arm and hearty approval not only of Mr. Bamber but of thou- sands of others. Mr. Bamber's old camp mate.

 Moor, their relations in camp life ripened Jesse Moor, died four years ago in CT. in a life long friendship. Four months of our subject's martial service were spent amid the horrors of Andersonville. The inhuman and awful treatment that was there given to the wretched inmates drove him crazy and for two 'eeks he w'as a maniac. The horrors of that place and those times can never lie fully depicted and it is with feeling of pain to this ay that Mr. Bamber refers to those days.

Finally he succeeded in getting out and often he has been posted on picket duty where he could talk to the enemy's pickets. On July 27, 1865. after much hardship, and brave service Mr. Bamber was mustered out and went back

to the mines, working the summer of 186.6 with a rebel. In March, 1867, he went to Westmoreland county. Pennsylvania, and fol- lowed mining in the capacity of an ordinary miner and boss until 1875, '" which year he moved to Des Moines, Iowa, and again went underground. Seven years were spent there, whence he had come to avoid the labor troubles of Pennsylvania when he found them just as severe. Finally in 1882. he quit a foreman's position in the mines to come to Montana and decided never to mine again for' other people.

He located a homestead that year, where he now resides and adjoining it was coal land and his skill during the winter of 1886 and 1887, was the means of saving the people of Glendive, MT from freezing to death as fuel was not to be had from any other place. He opened up a lead and coal was furnished.