Meriwether Lewis and Theodosia Burr Alston never knew one another because they lived and died in separate parts of the country Lewis was born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, and entered the US Army in May 1795 at the age of twenty-one. Lewis was stationed at Detroit in 1801, and on February 23, newly elected president Thomas Jefferson invited him to be his private secretary.1 On March 7, 1801, Lewis arrived in Pittsburgh and with much haste closed his accounts and departed for Washington, arriving on April 1. Expecting to meet with Jefferson, Lewis found that the president had already departed for Monticello and so he followed a few days later. Lewis's tenure as Jefferson's secretary began on April 30, 1801, and continued until March 3, 1803, which was at the close of the congressional session. During this time, there was never a moment when the two may have met, as we shall see. Lewis then went to Philadelphia to meet with various members of the American Philosophical Society who could enhance his training in the sciences for the expedition. Lewis finally departed for the west about the end of July 1803.

Theodosia Burr, daughter of Aaron Burr, spent her premarried life in New York and married Senator Joseph Alston of South Carolina on February 2, 1801, in Albany, New York.² They visited Baltimore on February 28, where they met her father, Aaron Burr, and stopped in Washington on March 4, 1801, where they witnessed his swearing-in ceremony as vice president. The couple then departed for South Carolina. Her son was born in the spring of 1802, and she returned to New York on June 16, 1803, to visit her family, and then met with her father and husband in Washington on October 16, 1803.³ Six years later, Theodosia was still living with her husband in Chiraw, South Carolina. Certainly by the time of Burr's trial in August 1807, political animosity would have kept them apart if not the fact that she was a married woman.

The stories of the romance between Lewis and Burr Alston are bunk and complete fabrications, unsupported by primary accounts. The first story originated with Munsey's Magazine, which published Emerson Hough's “The Magnificent Adventure” in April and May of 1916.⁴

Compared to other New York magazines, Munsey's was known for its active, timely, and “juicy” articles.5 After the publication in Munsey's, I. J. Cox, a professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, wrote to Stella Drumm at the Missouri Historical Society:

On a recent brief railway trip I devoted some time to Hough's “Magnificent Adventure.” It is a magnificent distortion of historical facts, where he mentions facts. He does not seem to care for historic sequence at all and to be utterly regardless of time. His main theme is a rather audacious conception, but I think it very poorly executed…. Many of its passages intended to be striking are more bathos.⁶

Delbert E. Wylder, professor at Murray State University, wrote Hough's biography and related some interesting facts about the “fictional creation” of the romance.

The relative success of Out of Doors led to the publication of another group of the Post (Saturday Evening Post) in 1916. That year also saw the publication of his first novel in three years, The Magnificent Adventure, a historical novel about the Lewis and Clark Expedition into the Far West complicated by a fictional creation of a love affair between Lewis and Theodosia Alston, daughter of Aaron Burr.⁷

In 1941, Anya Seton endorsed the romance with an emotional burst, supposedly from Meriwether Lewis, that was lacking in Hough's creation:

I am going to die, Theodosia, I cannot tell you how I know it but I do. I might tell you a vision I had, the second-sight of my Scotch forbears. I might tell you of the prophecy of the Mandan woman…. For me, I know that the trail is nearly ended.…I want to see you once again first. I shall be with you in mid-October. I shall not embarrass you; it will be but for a few hours. I am on my way to clear my name. President Madison has seen fit to question my expenditures out here. He questions my honor. It seems that I have made many enemies, who do not scruple to slander me.⁸

A year later, Fillmore Norfleet fanned the fictional flames.

[S]ent by Jefferson to Richmond sometime during the Burr trial, during which time he saw Theodosia Burr Alston, for whom his love had never waned despite her marriage and her father's antipathy for him; from St. Louis, Merne, as Theodosia called him, wrote September 1, 1809, I am going to die, Theodosia, I cannot tell you how I know it but I do. I might tell you a vision I had, the second-sight of my Scotch forbears. I might tell you of the prophecy of the Mandan woman…. For me, I know that the trail is nearly ended.…I want to see you once again first. I shall be with you in mid-October.9

The romance was kept alive in Eldon Chuinard's book in 1980 on the medical aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Why Chuinard included the romance in this fine book is a mystery. In 1994, David Chandler waded in with his Jefferson Conspiracies.¹⁰ Reimert Ravenholt, an epidemiologist, believed that Lewis had succumbed to venereal disease and included Seton's banter:

That Lewis was aware what was happening to him during 1809 is revealed by a letter to his old flame Theodosia Burr Alston, written shortly before he left St. Louis for the East: I am going to die, Theodosia, I cannot tell you how I know it but I do…. For me, I know that the trail is nearly ended.…I want to see you once again first. I shall be with you in October.¹¹

Seton added verve to a later passage, which would have prevented Ravenholt altogether from copying her work: “She read the letter again, then, leaning over the fire, put it on the embers, where it flared up brightly, and was gone.”¹²

At the end of her book, Seton stated that her credibility was sound “with the exception of the Meriwether Lewis romance for which there are three separate sources.” Ms. Seton does not cite any sources.

Lastly, Emerson Hough created a new nickname for Meriwether, Merne, when “Widow Lewis” (Lucy Marks, his mother) writes to Meriwether.

I am always waiting for you, Merne, said she. She used the Elizabethan vowel, as one should pronounce “bird,” with no sound of “u”—Mairne, the name sounded as she spoke it. And her voice was full and rich and strong, as was her son's; musically strong.¹³

In 1934, Charles Morrow Wilson in Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark, took the bait, broadened the scope of the name, and brought it to life. Wilson wrote that William Clark protested when Lewis decided to go to Washington to clear up his financial affairs in person: “It's tomfoolery, Merne, and if you weren't sick, you'd know it.”¹⁴