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Meriwether Lewis Randolph, Jeffersons grandson
Reading Level: Middle School
Meriwether Lewis was born in 1810 at Monticello. He was the tenth child of Martha Jefferson Randolph and Thomas Mann Randolph. He was named for Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson’s secretary and co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Meriwether Lewis studied law and philosophy at the University of Virginia. He went west, and was appointed the Secretary of the Arkansas Territory. In 1835 he married Elizabeth Martin, President Andrew Jackson’s grand-niece. They had one son, Lewis Jackson Randolph.
Meriwether Lewis died of malaria in 1837. By then, he had acquired over ten thousand acres in the new state of Arkansas.