Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-10-10


. water and heal my wounds
Through the cracks between the logs she
saw him stagger and fall against stump
Then he CrawleC, back to the house; but almost
Immediately afterward returned to the kitchen
door, though this time he did not speak
Next she heard him scraping bucket with a
gourd for water: but he found none and once
more entered the house. As soon as it was
light she sent her children to the barn to get the
servants, who found Lewis lying in bed, a
wound in his side and another in his forehead.
Two hours later, or just before the sun rose
above the trees" he breathed his last.
Investigated Forty Years Later
MODERN investigators have attacked this
1VA highly improbable tale, as it indeed is.
1t is not even plausible. But at the time it
seems to have been generally accepted. Still,
from the first there were some who refused to
believe that the brave Lewis, talented, success
full and popular, and with every reason to
look forward to brilliant future, had actually
killed himself. His mother and other relatives
ridiculed the theory of suicide and insisted
that he must have been murdered, if not by
Grinder then by his own body servant. a
Frenchman named Perrier. Gradually Others
voiced the same suspicion, definitely naming
Grinder as the murderer.
1t was not until nearly forty years later.
however, that any inquiry made. the
occasion being the decision of the Tennessee
Legislature to erect a monument over his
grave, winch all tnat time, 10 the Sila1he Vi
his fellow countrymen had been allowed to
remain unmarked bv so much stone.
Surviving witnesses examined by an
official commission. and in consequence of
their testimony report was returned affirming.
in guarded language, the commissions belief
that Lewis had persisted at the hands of an
assassin.
Private investigators now took the matter
up with the result that a version of the tragedy
was obtained fatty contradicting the story
told by Mrs. Grinder. According to this new
account, related by woman, Polly Spencer,
who had been working for the Grinders at the
time of Lewis death. Grinder was not away
from home, but on the contrary was alone
in the house with Lewis when the fatal shot
was fired. The Young Governor, moreover. had
shown no sign whatever of mental disturbance.
but had seemed thoroughly exhausted going to
bed Immediately after supper.
Mrs. Grinder, the Spencer woman, and the
Grinder children, her story continued, were in
the kitchen washing the supper dishes, when they
heard shot, and rushing in found Lewis life
less on the bed, while Grinder had disappeared.
Search of his clothes showed that he had only
twenty five cents in his pockets. 1t was
impossible, however, she concluded, to obtain
sufficient evidence to convict Grinder, who
afterward removed to distant part of the
State, whence a rumor reached his old neigh
borhood that, although previously quite poor,
he had become the owner of farm and num-
Der of slaves and seemed to have plenty of
money.
In some of its details the Spencer version
was quite as unsatisfactory as Mrs. Grinder
sensational tale 1t represented Grinder as
fleeing for his life, being captured, put on trial
but released all of which was purely imaginary
But in the main it was far more consistent and
hung together better than the narrative of
the roadhouse keepers wife, and has properly
been made much of by those historians of
to-day who deride the idea that gallant
Meriwether Lewis was a self murderer.
Jeferson's Explanation
IN fact the theory of suicide rests only on Mrs.
Grinders unbelievable story and state
ment by Jefferson Tin the memoir of Lewis writ
ten by him for publication with the first
edition of the - Journal" of the Lewis and Clark
expedition) to the effect that Lewis - had from
early life been subject to hypochondriac
affections, constitutional in all the nearer
branches of the family of his name, and more
immediately inherited by him from his father
But in making this statement there is ground
for suspecting that Jefferson was animated
chiefly by desire to explain and excuse the
act of suicide which, like nearly everybody
else at the time, he accepted unquestionably.
Certainly the imputation of hereditary
insanity has been Indignantly and repeatedly
denied by descendants of the family, and
Jefferson himself would never have intr,,Stei