Early Education of Meriwether Lewis

A wayside sign in Culpeper County, Virginia. Creative Commons, 2.0.  Cataracts blinded Waddel in about 1787, at age 48.

The public educational system we know today didn’t exist during the mid-18th century, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were youngsters. So how did they get a basic education?

Most children of the period were trained in the home by relatives or close friends, or at a neighbor’s home. The more affluent families would send their children to live and be educated by a private tutor, oftentimes a significant distance from home.

Young Meriwether’s earliest education would have been provided by his mother, Lucy. At the age of 13 or 14, he left his mother and stepfather’s home in Georgia to return to Virginia where he continued his education at the Albemarle Classical School. Conducted in a rough log building, classes were led by Parson Matthew Maury, who taught Lewis arithmetic, reading, writing, and a little Latin, Greek, and natural science.

After two years, Lewis moved on to the school led by Dr. Charles Everitt. It clearly wasn’t a good choice -- one of Everitt’s other students later wrote, “We disliked the teacher. His method of teaching was as bad as anything could be.”

Lewis endured Everitt’s teaching for only a short time and he then transferred to the school of the Reverend James Waddel (often spelled Waddell), whom he liked better and considered a “very polite scholar.” While he planned on staying at Waddel’s for several years, the growing business at his late father’s plantation was vying for Lewis’s attention. Finally, by 1791 when his stepfather died, he ended his education and the dream of going on to college at William and Mary in Williamsburg.

Of course, we know that Lewis later received additional training in the spring and summer of 1803 in preparation for the Expedition.