Robert McClellan

Background

Robert McClellan was born near Mercersburg in 1770, Pennsylvania. He was the son of a pioneer farmer, also named Robert.

Education

McClellan had little schooling, but he became an expert woodsman and hunter.

Career

His first employment was that of a pack-horseman in the transport of goods. In 1790, at Fort Gower, on the Ohio, he joined the army as a spy, or ranger, and in the following year went to Fort Washington (Cincinnati) and later to Fort Hamilton, where he again found work as a pack horseman. On the arrival of Wayne's army he was engaged as a scout, serving throughout the campaign of 1794-95 and distinguishing himself by a series of daring exploits which won for him the rank of lieutenant. In the summer of 1799 he journeyed south and at New Orleans was stricken with yellow fever. On his recovery he went to Philadelphia, where on account of wounds suffered in Wayne's campaign he was awarded a small pension and where for a time he was employed in the quartermaster's department. Sent to the Illinois country on official business in 1801, he shortly afterward resigned and entered the Indian trade. In 1807 McClellan and Ramsay Crooks led an expedition toward the upper Missouri. On meeting Ensign Pryor's party returning from its defeat by the Arikaras they turned back to a point near Old Council Bluffs and established a trading post.

They again started upstream in 1809 but were halted by a Sioux tribe and compelled to erect another establishment for trade. On the retirement of Crooks from the partnership early the following year, McClellan continued alone, but on being robbed by the Sioux he became disheartened and started for St. Louis. At the mouth of the Nodaway he found Crooks in the winter camp of Hunt's Astoria party and at once joined the Pacific Fur Company. He accompanied the expedition the following spring, arriving in Astoria, ragged, ill, and emaciated, in January 1812. In March he withdrew from the company, and in June started eastward with Stuart's party, which reached St. Louis, after extreme hardships and privations, April 30, 1813. A month later he was imprisoned for debt. In January 1814, with a stock of goods furnished by a friend, he opened a store in Cape Girardeau, Mo. , but ill health compelled his return to St. Louis the following summer. He found a home on the farm of Abraham Gallatin, and it was probably there that he died. He was buried on Gen. William Clark's farm, where his tombstone was unearthed in 1875.

Achievements

• McClellan is best known as the founder of a home on the farm of Abraham Gallatin.

Personality

Though of slight physique, McClellan was in his prime a man of great strength and agility, and pioneer annals credit him, while a scout in Wayne's army, with many amazing athletic feats.

Quotes from others about the person

• McClellan's courage is well attested by the inscription on his tombstone, thought to have been written by Clark: "Brave, honest and sincere; an intrepid warrior, whose services deserve perpetual remembrance. "

References

• Views of Louisiana: Together With a Journal of a Voyage Up the Missouri River, in 1811 (Classic Reprint)
• Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811