Dr. Edward Lewis Hempstead

Quick Facts

Significance:

Dr. Hempstead was a prominent resident and may have served as head clerk at Bent’s Old Fort, in 1846-47.

Place of Birth:

Connecticut

Date of Birth:

October 12, 1799

Place of Death:

St. Louis, Missouri

Date of Death:

April 10, 1855

One intriguing Bent’s Fort “resident,” who seems to have acted in the capacity of a clerk, was Dr. Edward Lewis Hempstead. Visitors to the Fort in 1846 commented often on the day to day assistance provided by the Doctor.

Born on October 12, 1799, in Connecticut, Edward Lewis Hempstead was only one month older than Charles Bent. Edward’s family (including uncles, aunts, and grandparents) had migrated to St. Louis from Connecticut early in the nineteenth century. One of his uncles, attorney Edward Hempstead (1780-1817), for whom we assume Edward L. was named, played a prominent role in territorial politics, being a close friend of Thomas Hart Benton. His widowed aunt married St. Louis fur trader Manuel Lisa, and when Lisa took her to his post at Council Bluffs in 1819, she became “the first white woman to ascend the Missouri.” Edward’s uncle Thomas was a partner in Lisa’s Missouri Fur Company, and another uncle, Stephen, worked for the firm. The Bents and Hempsteads certainly knew one another, moving as they did in the same St. Louis circles, both professionally and socially. Where Edward Lewis Hempstead received his medical training is unknown. In 1827 he married Eliza Brady Smith, the widow of a prominent St. Louis merchant and banker. She died in 1832.

What brought Hempstead to Bent’s Fort is unknown, although surely it was not solely to take a position as clerk for Bent, St. Vrain & Co. Like a number of St. Louisans before him, Hempstead may have been at Bent’s Fort to take advantage of the believed therapeutic powers of the Southwest’s “pure atmosphere.” The one clue that Hempstead was in some way employed by the firm – and it is by no means conclusive – comes from Garrard, who writes the following concerning his departure from Bent’s Fort in 1847: “Putting my ‘possibles’ in a wagon, I received my account of coffee, sugar, etc. from the affable Doctor Hempstead.”

Whatever may have been Dr. Hempstead’s relationship with Bent, St. Vrain & Co., he was a prominent individual at the fort, at least for the period 1846 to 1847. Garrard noted that the doctor’s “well-stocked library afforded recreation and pastime during the dull intervals of the day.” That the doctor was of a scholarly bent there is no doubt. He took a keen interest in the efforts of Lieut. James Abert of the Corps of Topographical Engineers to document the distinctive features of the area in 1846, an enterprise that covered everything from flora to geology to the Cheyenne language. Hempstead brought Abert plants and minerals and promised the young officer to have some “goldfish” caught from “a lake a few miles below here.” One morning during Abert’s stay the doctor assisted Abert in taking extensive measurements of the fort. Abert’s resulting drawings and specifications were critical in the National Park Service reconstruction of the famed post.

Dr. Hempstead’s tenure at Bent’s Fort is unclear. The fact that he enjoyed a “well-stocked library,” although we really do not know the exact number of volumes, suggests that Hempstead was well settled in at the fort. And Abert did refer to him as “one of the residents here” in his published report from 1846-1847. Yet Abert also visited Bent’s Fort in 1845, and he makes no mention of Hempstead in his journal from that expedition. There are no references to Dr. Hempstead at Bent’s Fort after 1847. What we do know is that the “affable” doctor, who provided an air of gentility at the post, died in St. Louis on April 10, 1855.

Content adapted from Mark L. Gardner's 2004 NPS Historic Resource Study:  "Bent's Old Fort on the Arkansas."