John Shields

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shields

Private John Shields (1769–1809) was, at 35, the oldest member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

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This biography is from a paper by George H. Yater originally presented at the 1991 annual meeting of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation in Louisville and subsequently published in "Nine Young Men from Kentucky," a May 1992 supplementary publication of We Proceeded On, the official publication of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

We are not sure when John Shields came to Kentucky. Work by earlier researchers shows that he was born near present-day Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1769, the sixth son of Robert and Nancy Stockton Shields, and one of ten brothers and a sister. Harrisonburg, by the way, located in the lovely Shenandoah Valley, is Louisville's twin city in the truest sense of the word. Both Harrisonburg and Louisville were given corporate life in a single act of the Virginia legislature in 1780.

By then, young Shields was eleven years old. Shortly after, in 1784, the family emigrated to Pigeon Forge in the Tennessee foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Here he learned blacksmithing at a shop owned by a brother-in-law, Samuel Wilson, and also operated Wilson's grist mill. He was an apt pupil of blacksmithing and his skill proved unusually valuable to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

By 1790 he was in Kentucky and about that time married a girl named Nancy, family name unknown. The only reference I have been able to find to a John Shields locally is from a session of the County Court on November 8, 1797, when persons named to appraise the estate of a John Williams, deceased, included John Shields. Was he our man? Perhaps, but there is no way to be certain.

In any event, he became a private soldier in the Expedition, even though Lewis had earlier called for only unmarried men. He was, at age 34, the oldest man in the party and was the blacksmith, gunsmith, and all-around mechanic. His work as blacksmith brought in badly needed corn during the winter sojourn of 1804-05 at Fort Mandan. On February 5, 1805, Meriwether Lewis noted in his journal that the party was "visited by the natives, who brought in a considerable quantity of corn for the work the blacksmith had done for them. They are peculiarly attached to a battle ax formed in a very inconvenient manner in my opinion, it is fabricated of iron only." There were several such entries. And on April 8, 1806, Clark noted that: "John Shields cut out my rifle and brought hir to shoot very well. The party owes much to the ingenuity of this man, by whom their guns are repaired when they get out of order which is very often."

At the conclusion of the Expedition, Lewis wrote of Shields: "Has received the pay only of a private. Nothing was more peculiarly useful to us, in various situations, then the skill and ingenuity of this man as an artist, in repairing our guns, accroutements, &c. and should it be thought proper to allow him something as an artificer, he has well deserved it." There is no record that Lewis's suggestion was acted upon. Shields' skill as a hunter comes through the journals, as well. There are at least seventy references to his hunting accomplishments.

As an acute observer of anything new that he had come across, Shields proved a "medicine man" to another Kentuckian on the Expedition-William Bratton. Bratton, as one of the saltmakers on the Pacific Coast, came down with back pains so acute that he could scarcely walk. On the return journey Bratton traveled by canoe or horseback. When the Expedition halted in present-day Idaho at "Camp Chopunnish" to wait for the snow to melt in the high Bitterroots, Shields suggested a treatment for Bratton. He said he had seen men with similar complaints cured by violent sweats.

Lewis detailed the process in his journal: Shields dug a circular hole four feet deep, lighted a fire to heat the surrounding earth, put in a seat and willow hoops across the top to hold blankets. Bratton was placed in the hole and given water to sprinkle on the hot earth to create steam. The steam and plunges into cold water cured the back pain. Lewis added that during the treatment Bratton was given "copious draughts" of a strong tea of horse mint. This was also Shields' idea and he told Lewis he had seen "Sinneca snake root" used when mint was not available.

Following the Expedition's return, Shields spent a year trapping in Missouri with famed Kentuckian Daniel Boone, who was evidently related to him in some way. [Recent research places Shields back home by the spring of 1807.] Upon his return to the Falls of the Ohio area he spent some time with Daniel's lesser-known brother, Squire Boone, in Indiana-in what is now Harrison County some thirty miles west of Louisville. Shields died in December 1809 and is probably buried in the rather neglected Little Flock Baptist Church graveyard south of Corydon, Indiana, in Harrison County. I might note that Squire Boone was, among other things, a Baptist preacher and likely presided at Shields' burial. John and Nancy Shields were the parents of a daughter named Janette who married her cousin John Tipton, a man who became a power in Indiana politics.

Private in the U.S. Army. John was scout and gunsmith for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, he was recruited by Clark at Clarksville, Indiana, in October 1803 and was the oldest man in the party. He then lived with relatives in Athens, TN and is buried there. He married about 1790 in Kentucky to Nancy, and had a daughter Jennie (or Janette) who married her cousin John Tipton.

On John's headstone "John Shields Pvt US Army, 1769-1809, As a Member of Lewis and Clark's Corp of Discovery, Pvt Shields' Abilities as a Scout, Hunter, Gunsmith, Blacksmith & Mechanic Helped Them Complete One of the Most Amazing & Challenging Journeys in American History.

Fifth of the Ten Brothers. According to John F. Shields, was a scout and gunsmith and was one of the 29 members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Oregon in 1803. John F. Shields says he was a wanderer all his life.

In 1784, John went with his family to live in the Shields Fort in Tennessee. Later, he ran a mill and blacksmith shop for Sam Wilson. He was the gunsmith for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. His ingenuity at the forge in making knives, hatchets and trinkets for trading with the Mandan Indians near the present site of Mandan, North Dakota and his diplomatic skill in treating with them saved the expedition from starvation and massacre, according to John A. Shields. He walked, scouting for hostile Indians, all the way from the mouth of the Kansas River to the headwaters of the Missouri, then down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, being one of the first to make that perilous transcontinental journey, probably the first white man to do so since, as scout, he was a distance ahead of the other members of the expedition. He is praised highly in the official reports of Merriweather Lewis and William Clark.

John was recruited by Clark at Clarksville, Indiana in October 1803. At 35, he was the oldest man signed on for the expedition.

On returning from the Far West, he spent a year trapping with Daniel Boone in Missouri and another with Boone in Indiana. The fatigue, exposure, starvation and other hardships of his long trip with Lewis and Clark ruined his health and that of most of the members of the expedition. Efforts to secure relief from the government failed. John Shields spent his last years as a pauper and invalid among his relatives and died relatively young about 1815. He is buried in an unmarked grave in a rural cemetery near Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee.

John A. Shields reports that John's "only child, Jennie, married her cousin, John Tipton" (son of Janet).

Christine Brown says a land survey made for John Shields 8 July 1836 makes doubtful the about 1815 date for John's death. The survey by John Mullendore was for 5 1/2 acres on the west fork of the Little Pigeon adjoining land of Robert Shields. She does not indicate how she knows this was 10 Brother John.

Excerpts from "Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West" by Stephen E. Ambrose, Simon & Schuster, 1996:

"So Lewis and Clark could be highly selective. Clark was an excellent judge of men. He first gathered seven of the best young woodsmen and hunters in this part of the country--these were the men awaiting Lewis' approval before being accepted. They included Charles Floyd, Nathaniel Pryor, William Bratton, Reubin Field, Joseph Field, George Gibson and Jon Shields ." p. 129.

"Lewis went off to St. Louis, conducted business and returned a week later. Sergeant Ordway reported to him that Privates Reubin Field and John Shields had refused to mount guard duty as ordered because they would be damned if they would take orders from anyone other than the captains."

"On the afternoon of the 29th, Lewis crossed over to Wood river. Clark had alarming news. There had been fights between the men. John Shields had opposed an order and had threatened Sergeant Ordway's life and wished to return to Kentucky. . . . These young heroes were in great shape, strong as bulls, eager to get going, full of energy and testosterone--and bored. So they fought and drank--and drank and fought. . . . But fighting among themselves was one thing. Threatening a sergeant quite another. On March 29, the captains put Shields and Colter on trial for mutiny. The privates 'asked the forgiveness & promised to doe better in future.' The captains relented. No punishment was noted. And two days later, Shields and Colter were welcomed into the permanent party."

September 1804, in what would later become Nebraska, "Private John Shields came in from a hunt to report another wonder, a deer with a black tail ."

"Private Shields brought in a 'hare of the prairie,' giving Lewis a second opportunity in a single day to measure and describe a new species--in this case, the white-tailed jackrabbit."

December 21, 1804-March 21, 1805, Mandan village in the Dakotas: "Private John Shields was a skilled blacksmith. He had set up for business at the expedition's forge and bellows inside the fort. There he mended iron h es, sharpened axes and repaired firearms for the Indians in exchange for corn. But by the end of January, business was turning sour. The market for mending hoes had been satisfied. Shields needed some new product to attract business. The arms trade was the obvious answer. Not in firearms--the captains had turned away all the requests for rifles or pistols--but not in battle axes. There was a particular form of battle axe highly prized by the Indians and easily made by Shields. Lewis approved the design, writing that it was "formed in a very inconvenient manner in my opinion. The blade was too thin and too long, the handle too short, the overall weight too little, all of which combined to make a weapon that made an 'uncertain and easily avoided stroke.' But arm merchants give the customer what he wants. Shields went to work, getting his sheet iron from all-but-burned-out stove. Some of the men were detailed to cutting wood to make a charcoal kiln to expand production capacity. Still the Americans couldn't turn out battle axes fast enough. The Indians were skilled traders who drove hard bargains. On February 6, Lewis had Shields cut up what was left of the stove into pieces of four inches square, which could then be worked into arrow points or buffalo-hide scrapers. After some haggling, a price was set: seven to eight gallons of corn for each piece of metal. Each side thought it had made a great bargain. In his February 6 journal entry, Lewis paid tribute to Shields and his helpers. 'The blacksmiths take a considerable quantity of corn today in payment for their labour. The blacksmiths have proved a happy resource to us in our present situation as I believe it would have been difficult to have devised any other method to have procured corn from the natives.' Lewis gave full credit to Shields when he might have split it, giving at least some to the Indians for having the corn available in the first place."

October 8-December 7, 1805: "The choices were to stay, proceed to the falls or to cross to and examine the other side before deciding. Naturally, the third alternative won, overwhelming--only Private John Shields voted against it. . . . This was the first vote ever held in the Pacific Northwest. It was the first time in American history that a black slave had voted, the first time a woman had voted."

December 8, 1805-March 6, 1806: "The huts had their own cooks, kettles and fires. The captains furnished each mess with an ax to provide firewood. All other 'public tools' deposited in the captains' quarters could only be taken with with their permission and must be returned immediately after they were used. This was to prevent the men from falling into temptation and trading an awl or a file for sexual favors or furs. Lewis was explicit on the point: 'Any individual selling or disposing of any tool or iron or steel instrument, arms, accoutrements or ammunicion shall be deemed guilty of a breach of this order, and shall be tryed and punished accordingly.' He exempted gunsmith John Shields from the restriction."

March 23-June 9, 1806: "But never before had they been so provoked. One part of warriors tried to wrest a tomahawk from Private John Colter, but they had picked the wrong man. . . . Others threatened Shields, who had to pull his knife to drive them off."

"Among the party, Bratton was still suffering from his bad back. . . . Sacagawea's son John Baptiste . . . had a high fever and a swollen neck and throat. . . . Clark had better results with Bratton. At Private John Shields' suggestion, Clark prescribed a sweat bath for Bratton." . It goes on to describe how alternating Bratton from a sweat bath to a cold stream in one day had Bratton walking free from pain for the first time in months.

January-March 1807, Washington: "On January 23, Alston presented his bill for compensation. It called for 1,600 acres each to Lewis and Clark, 320 acres to each of the enlisted men and double pay for all. . . . Then Lewis listed all the men. . . . for Private John Shields, whose ingenuity . . . in repairing our guns was indispensable." The compensation plans aid the men could "go over all the Western country and locate their warrants on the best land." It is not known where Shields' 320 acres was located .

The following is from "We Proceeded On," the official publication of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc., July 1979:

Charles G. Clarke in his "Men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," provides a brief biographical sketch of Private John Shields and says that Shields "was born in 1769 near Harrisonburg [sic], Augusta County, Virginia. Being aged 35 when he joined the exploring party, he appears to be the oldest man of the round-trip party." Captain Clark was born in 1770, Sergeant Gass in 1771 and Captain Lewis in 1774, and there were several members of the party born between 1771 and 1774. Despite the statements made by the captains, when recruiting men for the enterprise, that they would consider only unmarried men, Charles Clarke's biographical data indicates that Shields married in about 1790 while living in Kentucky and that he and his wife Nancy had a daughter, Janette.

The captains referred to him as one of the ". . . nine young men from Kentucky, . . . " and he served the enterprise as an enlisted man from October 19, 1803 until October 10, 1806.

This man has been most often referred to as the blacksmith, gunsmith or general mechanic of the Expedition's personnel. Like Sergeant Gass, who specialized, among other things as a carpenter, it was Shields who the captains extol as the man who improvised from what little metallic products they carried with them; kept the firearms in good working order, and probably formed their rounds of ammunition by melting the lead from cannisters which contained their gun powder. . . .

Both Olin Wheeler and Paul Cutright make the observation that William Bratton and Alexander Willard, in addition to John Shields, were blacksmiths. Cutright comments: "When repair work lagged, an imaginative brave saved the day by conceiving the idea that Shields' artistry could make an iron battle-ax for him. Shields obliged with the result that he and his helpers hd a rash of requests for these formidable weapons. They had a zest for their work, however, since they were rewarded by watching their stockpile of Indian corn grow larger and larger. So, due to the hardihood of the hunters and the industry of Shields, Bratton and Willard, the explorers had plenty of food and good variety throughout the winter. . . . "

Shields' other contributions to the success of the enterprise are many and varied.

When George Shannon was lost along the lower Missouri River from August 27 to September 11, 1804, it was John Shields, along with Joseph Field, who were assigned by the commanders to search for him. The journals do not document that they found him, but rather indicate that Shannon, thinking that he was behind the main party and the vessels on the river, had hurried on ahead of them, thus increasing the distance each day until he ran out of ammunition. When Shields and J. Field caught up with him, if they were the ones that did, he was near starvation and exhaustion.

Lewis' journal for May 20, 1805 credits Shields with the discovery of a " . . . bould spring or fountain from the foot of the Lard. hills . . . about five miles below the entrance of the Yellowstone River. Lewis commented further that this was a significant discovery since most of the springs they had encountered in this region ". . . without exception are impregnated with the salts [minerals] which abound in this country. . . ."

Once Shields had completed his gunsmith and blacksmith duties and had all the guns in good working order, he apparently spent a good deal of his time using the firearms as a hunter. The Thwaites Index lists nearly 70 references to his activity as a hunter, and the much briefer Sergeant Ordway journal lists seven instances related to Shields' hunting accomplishments.

In early August 1805, near Lemhi Pass, Shields was in the advanced party with Captain Lewis, Drouillard (drewyer) and McNeal, who were well ahead of the main party. Their purpose was to make contact with the Snake or Shoshone Indians. Having reached the headwaters of the Missouri and its tributaries, the main party would soon be abandoning travel on the waterways, would cache their canoes and continue their journey overland. Lewis hoped that finding friendly Indians would provide a source for horses. When they did finally see, and attempted to make contact with, an Indian, it was Shields who probably did not see Lewis' signal to stop advancing and by failing to halt frightened the Indian so that he retreated. Lewis' journal reveals: " . . . but looking over his sholder he still kept his eye on Drewyer and Shields who were still advancing neither of them having the sagacity enough to recollect of impropriety of advancing when they saw me thus in parley with the Indian . . . but he did not remain when I got nearer than about 100 paces when he suddenly turned his ho[r]se about, gave him the whip leaped a creek and disappeared in the willow brush in an instant, and with him vanished all my hopes of obtaining horses for the present. I now felt quite as much mortification and disappointment as I had pleasure and expectation at the first sight of this Indian. I fe[l]t soarly chagrined at the conduct of the men particularly Shields to whom I principally attributed this failure in obtaining an introduction to the natives. I now called the men to me and could not forbare abraiding them a little for their want to attention and imprudence on this occasion. . . ."

We do not have detailed information concerning John Shields after the expedition returned to St. Louis. His discharge from the military is dated October 10, 1806. He received his pay plus a warrant for land in Franklin County, Missouri. Chalres G. Clarke indicates that he spent a year trapping with Daniel Boone in Missouri and Indiana and that he died in December 1809 and was probably buried in Little Flock Baptist Burying Ground near Corydon, Harrison County, Indiana. His wife Nancy survived him, and John Tipton, who married his daughter Janette, served as an executor of his will.

Dr. Coues indicates that the captains named two streams for John Shields. One a branch of the Missouri, which flows in a northwesterly direction into the south side of the Missouri a few miles below the Great Falls. Today's cartography indicates this waterway to be Highwood Creek. The other stream is a tributary of the Yellowstone River. Shields was in Captain Clark's party on the return journey across today's Bozeman Pass from the Three Forks of the Missouri, and eventually to the descent of the Yellowstone to its confluence with the Missouri. Captain Clark gave the name of Shields River to the first principal tributary which flows southward from out of the Crazy Horse Mountains. This stream is just east of the Bozeman Pass divide and flows into the Yellowstone River near Livingston, Montana. Modern maps indicate this to be Shields River in Park County, Montana, and the waterway remains a lasting tribute to this important member of the great exploration.

A final accolade to John Shields' contributions to the success of the enterprise appears in Captain Lewis' letter and enclosure of the roster of men who accompanied him, which he forwarded to the secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, on January 15, 1807. This was an unusual request, and the only instance of such a request in Lewis' remarks to the secretary of war concerning the men of his command. Lewis wrote: "John Sheilds [sic] has received the pay only of a private. Nothing was more peculiarly useful to us in various situations than the skill and ingenuity of this man as an artist, in repairing our guns, accoutrements, and should it be thought proper to allow him something as an artificer, he has well deserved it." Unfortunately, we find no record in any of the literature and documentation of the expedition that the secretary of war took any action in response to Captain Lewis' request.

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Born in 1769 near Harrisonburg, Augusta County, Virginia. Being aged thirty-five, he appears to be the oldest man of the round-trip party. He was the son of Robert and Nancy (Stockton) Shields, the sixth son and one of ten brothers and an older sister. In 1784, his parents emigrated to Pidge on Forge in what is now Sevier County, Tennessee. Here John ran a mill and a blacksmith shop for his brother-in-law, Samuel Wilson. About 1790, he married Nancy Stockton , and they had a daughter, Janette. John Shields enlisted in the expedition on October, 1803, in Kentucky, and is considered one of the "Nine young men from Kentucky." He was one of the most valuable men on the expedition, as he was the head blacksmith , gunsmith, boat builder and general repair man for anything needed. His blacksmith work helped keep the party in corn and other foodstuffs for much of the winter and spring of 1804-05.

When the expedition returned, Captain Lewis wrote: "Shields had received the pay of only a private. Nothing was more particularly useful to us, in various situations, in repairing the guns, accoutrements, etc., and should it be thought proper to allow him something [extra] as an artificer, he has well deserved it." In 1806 he received $180.00 in back pay, and in 1807, $178.50 in extra pay (as did the others), plus a warrant for land located in Franklin County, Missouri.

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GEDCOM Source

MH:S256 Ancestry Family Trees Name: Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network.Original data: Family Tree file @R6@ MH:SC4506 Ancestry Family Trees Ancestry Family Trees http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=9761635&pid=964 0