George Rogers Clark
George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 – February 13, 1818) was an American military officer and surveyor from Virginia who became the highest-ranking Patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the Virginia militia in Kentucky (then part of Virginia) throughout much of the war. He is best known for his captures of Kaskaskia in 1778 and Vincennes in 1779 during the Illinois campaign, which greatly weakened British influence in the Northwest Territory (then part of the British Province of Quebec) and earned Clark the nickname of "Conqueror of the Old Northwest". The British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
For other uses, see George Rogers Clark (disambiguation).
George Rogers Clark
November 19, 1752
Albemarle County, Virginia, British America
February 13, 1818 (aged 65)
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
Virginia
United States
1774–1790
Illinois Regiment
Western Frontier
- Jonathan Clark (brother)
- William Clark (brother)
Clark's major military achievements occurred before his thirtieth birthday. Afterward, he led militia forces in the opening engagements of the Northwest Indian War, but was accused of being drunk on duty. He was disgraced and forced to resign, despite his demand for a formal investigation into the accusations. Clark left Kentucky to live in the Indiana Territory but was never fully reimbursed by the Virginian government for his wartime expenditures. During the final decades of his life, he worked to evade creditors and suffered living in increasing poverty and obscurity. He was involved in two failed attempts to open the Spanish-controlled Mississippi River to American traffic. Following a stroke and the amputation of his right leg, he became disabled. Clark was aided in his final years by family members, including his younger brother William, one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He died of a stroke on February 13, 1818.
Early life[edit]
George Rogers Clark was born on November 19, 1752, in Albemarle County, Virginia, near Charlottesville, the hometown of Thomas Jefferson.[5][6] He was the second of ten children borne by John and Ann Rogers Clark, who were Anglicans of English and possibly Scottish descent.[7][8] Five of their six sons became officers during the American Revolutionary War. Their youngest son William was too young to fight in the war, but he later became famous as a leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The family moved from the frontier to Caroline County, Virginia, in 1756 after the outbreak of the French and Indian War. They lived on a 400-acre (1.6 km2) plantation that they later developed to a total of more than 2,000 acres (8.1 km2).[9]
Clark had little formal education.[6] He lived with his grandfather so that he could receive a common education at Donald Robertson's school, where fellow students included James Madison and John Taylor of Caroline.[10] He was also tutored at home, as was usual for the children of Virginia planters in this period. There was no public education. His grandfather trained him to be a surveyor.[11]
In 1771 at age 19, Clark left his home on his first surveying trip into western Virginia.[12] In 1772, he made his first foray into Kentucky via the Ohio River at Pittsburgh and spent the next two years surveying the Kanawha River region, as well as learning about the area's natural history and customs of the various tribes of Indians who lived there.[13][14] In the meantime, thousands of settlers were entering the area as a result of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768, by which some of the tribes had agreed to peace.[15]
Clark's military career began in 1774, when he served as a captain in the Virginia militia. He was preparing to lead an expedition of 90 men down the Ohio River when hostilities broke out between the Shawnee and settlers on the Kanawha frontier; this conflict eventually culminated in Lord Dunmore's War. Most of Kentucky was not inhabited by Indians, although such tribes as the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Seneca (of the Iroquois Confederacy) used the area for hunting. Tribes in the Ohio country who had not been party to the treaty signed with the Cherokee were angry, because the Kentucky hunting grounds had been ceded without their approval. As a result, they tried to resist encroachment by the American settlers, but were unsuccessful. Clark spent a few months surveying in Kentucky, as well as assisting in organizing Kentucky as a county for Virginia prior to the American Revolutionary War.[14][16]
Death and legacy[edit]
After another stroke, Clark died at Locust Grove on February 13, 1818; he was buried at Locust Grove Cemetery two days later.[72] Clark's remains were exhumed along with those of his other family members on October 29, 1869, and buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.[73]
In his funeral oration, Judge John Rowan succinctly summed up Clark's stature and importance during the critical years on the trans-Appalachian frontier: "The mighty oak of the forest has fallen, and now the scrub oaks sprout all around."[74] Clark's career was closely tied to events in the Ohio-Mississippi Valley at a pivotal time when the region was inhabited by numerous Native American tribes and claimed by the British, Spanish, and French, as well as the fledgling U.S. government.[75] As a member of the Virginia militia, and with Virginia's support, Clark's campaign into the Illinois country helped strengthen Virginia's claim on lands in the region as it came under the control of the Americans.[76] Clark's military service in the interior of North America also helped him became an "important source of leadership and information (although not necessarily accurate) on the West."[75]
Clark is best known as a war hero of the Revolutionary War in the West, especially as the leader of the secret expeditionary forces that captured Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes in 1778–79. Some historians have suggested that the campaign supported American claims to the Northwest Territory during negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of Paris (1783).[14] Clark's Grant, the large tract of land on the north side of the Ohio River that he received as compensation for his military service, included a large portion of Clark County, Indiana, and portions of Floyd and Scott Counties, as well as the present-day site of Clarksville, Indiana, the first American town laid out in the Northwest Territory (in 1784). Clark served as the first chairman of the Clarksville, Indiana, board of trustees.[14][56] Clark was unable to retain title to his landholdings. At the end of his life, he was poor, in ill health, and frequently intoxicated.[77]
Several years after Clark's death the government of Virginia granted his estate $30,000 (equivalent to $807,882 in 2023) as a partial payment on the debts it owed him.[65] The Virginian government continued to repay Clark for decades; the last payment to his estate was made in 1913.[78] Clark never married and he kept no account of any romantic relationships, although his family held that he had once been in love with Teresa de Leyba, sister of Fernando de Leyba, the lieutenant governor of Spanish Louisiana. Writings from his niece and cousin in the Draper Manuscripts in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society attest to their belief in Clark's lifelong disappointment over the failed romance.[79]