York (Lewis and Clark)
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York (c. 1770– c. 1831) was the only one of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to serve without choice in the matter: he was William Clark's slave, having been inherited from Clark's father. He was about the same age as Clark and had been his companion from childhood, as was common in the South at the time. The journals present him as a large, strong man, who carried a gun and shared the duties and risks of the expedition in full.
After the Corps returned, York apparently asked Clark for his freedom based upon his good services during the expedition. Clark refused, claiming financial difficulties. York, who was married to a woman owned by a different master, pleaded with Clark to be allowed to return to the Louisville area where his wife's owner lived. Clark's letters to his brother reveal increasing irritation with York. Feeling that York was being disobedient, Clark threatened to hire him out to a severe master; he also "gave him a Severe trouncing", and even had York jailed briefly. York was finally sent to Louisville and hired out to a demanding master for at least two years.
Clark may have set York free sometime after 1816 and set him up in a freight business in Tennessee and Kentucky which later failed; he then tried to rejoin Clark in St. Louis, but died of cholera on the way. There are, however, some doubts about this story; he may simply have been hired out to the owner of a freight business. At least one later account suggests he may have escaped to live on the frontier.
A statue of York, by sculptor Ed Hamilton, with plaques commemorating the Lewis and Clark Expedition and his participation in it, stands at Louisville's Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere, next to the wharf on the Ohio River.
