Meriwether Lewis Memorial Service

me standing there
Originally uploaded by FreeManWalking

Back on October 7th a friend and I took the long but scenic drive from Murfreesboro, down through Columbia, and across Highway 412 to the Meriwether Lewis Monument on the Natchez Trace. We were going down to pay homage to the man whom I’ve written about and read about so much in the past two years. Two hundred years after his death Meriwether Lewis was going to be memorialized and given a proper military funeral.

Like so much of the summer and fall of 2009 the days leading up to the event had been drearily soggy with leaden skies intermittent drizzle. But this day the clouds parted to reveal that deep blue, so clear you can see the domed ceiling of the earth’s cathedral. The front that blew out the clouds also brought in some comfortably cooler temperatures with a high that barely broke the mid-60’s.
I’d been told to arrive a couple of hours early but that proved to be a bit over cautious. Yes there were crowds but then again this was being held in a park so it wasn’t going to fill up. My friend and I had a couple of hours to kill so we walked up to the obelisk that marks Lewis’ grave. It is set on a stack of stones that were rededicated in 2001 because the old from the original monument built in 1848 had crumbled with time. Limestone is like that. The same interaction of limestone and water that caused the eternal memorial to have to be rebuilt 150 years after it was placed is also responsible for the immense cave systems in Tennessee and Kentucky. The shaft on top of the stones is a broken at to signify a life cut short…Lewis was only 35 when he died.

That morning I had been reading some more of Lewis’ journal entries from his long trek with the Corps of Discovery and came across a passage where he expressed frustration at not being able to give a faithful rendition of the Great Falls of the Missouri or convey the awe which the scene inspired in him. He “most sincerely regretted that [he] had not brought a crimee obscura…”. This puzzled me because I knew that photography didn’t come into existence until the 1839 when Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype. Or was there something before?

I walked over to man in period costume who was at work under a parasol standing behind what looked like an old camera. His name was John Staley and he said that he had also been puzzled by the mention of a crimee obscura…so much so that he had done some research and then built two of them. One was on loan to Monticello, the other was the one he was using at the monument. He explained that a crimee obscura isn’t a camera…however its everything but one. “All that’s missing is the chemistry,” said Staley.

He showed me how it works and it is decidedly clever. The lens is aimed at the object in question, the image is reflected off a mirror and projected onto a screen in the box of the instrument. At this point a thin sheet of paper is placed over the screen and the object is traced. Its an ingenuous way to capture perfect proportion and details.

Staley had come to capture the monument in his crimee obscura but he was attracting too much attention to get any work done. I think this day his work was really presenting some living history to people who obviously had an interest.

The program finally started at 3:00 p.m. and had the hushed solemnity of a funeral service which it was. Keynote speakers included a Stephanie Ambrose Tubbs, daughter of Stephen Ambrose, whose book Undaunted Courage brought Meriwether Lewis back to life in the mind of the general public. A collateral descendent of Lewis read a poem and the great-great-great grandson of William Clark told of the remarkable friendship that grew between Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In the only levity added to the situation he read Clarks acceptance to Lewis’ invitation to join the expedition, commenting that in a thirty word sentence his ancestor had managed to invent one word and misspell three others. Clark was known to be an adventurous speller.

The crowd sat respectfully quiet through it all under a shady canopy of post oaks and sweetgum trees. At the end of the service a large procession made its way to the gravesite to the steady beat of a military drum down a road lined with flags from the states that would eventually be formed from the territory which Lewis’ expedition had explored. Re-enactors stood in formation at the gravesite as dignitaries laid wreaths at the base of the monument. Then plant specimens representing those Lewis had first discovered for science were laid among the wreaths. An honor guard from the 101st Airborne fired a 21-gun salute then a piper played “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. As happens when “Amazing Grace” is played on the bagpipes people became teary eyed, weeping for the young national hero who took his own life too early…and probably moved by certain things going on in their own life that the shrill beauty of the tune can dredge up at moments of introspection.

I suppose Lewis was never given a proper funeral when he died in1809 but he definitely received on the day I was there.