The Families

The Clark, Lewis, and Meriwether families provided the United States with some of its most decorated citizens. Several of the members of each of these families, including George Rogers Clark and William Lewis served in the Revolutionary army. Several helped initiate America's westward expansion, including George Rogers Clark, William Clark, Meriwether Lewis, and Reuben Lewis, who traveled west with his brother and served as a liaison among the Indian tribes.

Back home in Virginia, the members of these families were among the first to settle the region of central Virginia that now encompasses Albemarle, Goochland, and Caroline counties. The tracts of land they claimed in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries helped define how the central Virginia landscapes looks today. They counted among their neighbors and friends the prominent Jefferson and Carr families and their kin. Like those more famous families, the Clarks, Lewises, and Meriwethers, provided their share of remarkable politicians, doctors and other civil servants in addition to their prominent military men.