Blaise Cenas

Photo:  Creative Commons, 2.0

In another article, we discussed the mis-firing of Meriwether Lewis’s air gun and how, when the Captain and his party stopped at Brunot’s Island, a woman was nearly killed.

Lewis himself didn’t fire the air gun during the mishap. According to his journal entry of August 31, 1803, the Captain turned the gun over to Blaise Cenas who accidentally discharged the weapon and the ball passed through the hat of a woman about 40 yards away. Her temple was cut, she fell, and blood gushed. But she survived and was revived after about a minute.

Who was Blaise Cenas? We don’t know much, but it’s believed he was the 27-year-old nephew-in-law of Dr. Felix Brunot, the island’s owner. Chances are Cenas was one of the Freemasons whom Lewis had become acquainted with during his six-week residency in Pittsburgh. It seems the keelboat stopped at Brunot’s Island so a short “bon voyage” party could be held for the Captain and his small military party.

According to the Summer 2010 newsletter of the Ohio River Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Cenas was a Frenchman born in Marseilles in 1776. He moved to Philadelphia in 1802 where he married Pauline Baker, the daughter of the city’s mayor, Hilary Baker. It’s likely that Meriwether Lewis knew the mayor and his family from his time of pre-Expedition education in Philadelphia, and he possibly met Cenas at that time.