Day-by-Day / September 6, 1803

September 6, 1803

Sailing past Steubenville

Steubenville, OH Lewis employs horses, sails, and oxen to pass over numerous gravel bars. Lewis employs the boat’s sails, but the strong winds provide new challenges. They make only ten miles.

Wellsburg, West Virginia

early red brick buildings on the Ohio River

© 2021 by Robert Heacock. Used by permission.

At age sixty, Patrick Gass, former sergeant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, settled in Wellsburg, married twenty-year old Maria Hamilton, and raised a family. He died there at the age of ninety-nine—the oldest surviving member of the expedition.

Dragging with Horses

[s]truck on a riffle which we got over with some difficulty and in the distance of two miles and a half passed 4 others three of which we were obliged to drag over with horses; the man charged me the exorbitant price of two dollars for his trouble.—
—Meriwether Lewis

Related: Horse Chronicles | The Barge (called boat, barge, and bateau but never keelboat)

Broken Sprit Sail

being 6 M. from encam[pment] hoisted our fore sale found great relief from it we run two miles in a few minutes when the wind becoming so strong we were obliged to hall it in lest it should carry away the mast, but the wind abating in some measure we again spread it; a sudan squal broke the sprete [sprit] and had very nearly carried away the mast, after which we firled an[d] secured it tho’ the wind was so strong as to carry us pretty good speed by means of the arning and firled sails.—
—Meriwether Lewis

 

Frederick William Augustus, Baron Von Steuben

by Charles Willson Peale, 1781–82

Painting of a late 18th-century aristocrat

Oil on canvas, 23 x 20 inches. Courtesy Independence National Historic Park.

Related: Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730–1794)

Steubenville

got on pretty well to Steuwbenville, which we past at 2 Oc. . . . struck on a riffle about two miles below the town hoisted our mainsail to assist in driving us over the riffle the wind blew so heard as to break the spreat of it, and now having no assistance but by manual exertion and my men woarn down by perpetual lifting I was obliged again to have recourse to my usual resort and sent out in serch of horses or oxen—
—Meriwether Lewis

Related: Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730–1794)

A Thriving Place

Stewbenville a small town situated on the Ohio in the state of Ohio about six miles above Charlestown in Virginia and 24 above Wheeling—is small well built thriving place has several respectable families residing in it, five years since it was a wilderness—
—Meriwether Lewis

 

Discover More

  • The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.

This page was funded in part by the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, U.S. National Park Service.

This site is provided as a public service by the
Logo: Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
with cooperation and funding from the following organizations:

Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).