Alexander Hamilton Willard

For the last several years I've been on Sacajawea's trail, literally from Montana and Idaho to Oregon. Of course Sacajawea means Lewis and Clark. Part of the trail my brother was working as a tourist supervisor at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Lewis and Clark's sponsor of course. I also carry a replica, a commemorative 2003 nickel, of the Lewis and Clark peace coin they carried in 1803 along with a Sacajawea one dollar coin on my keychain.

So I'm standing at the teller window in my bank, waiting on some checks, chatting with the teller about Sacajawea and some of my being where she had been when a guy at the next teller window tells me there's a member of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery buried in Franklin, very much nearby Sacramento.

Wait a second, did this perfect stranger just tell me there is a member of the Lewis and Clark exhibition buried in Franklin -- a spot in the road? A spot down south a bit?

How do you come to know such a thing?, I think I asked him. He told me, “I portrayed him in a school play. He was a gunsmith with Lewis and Clark.” Okay, now used to what he's saying. He tells me where in Franklin. I think I know enough about Franklin to know there ain't much to know, sort of a compliment to another version of unknown California.

All I know about Alexander Hamilton Willard is he was born in 1777, then was with Lewis and Clark in 1803 to 1805, served in the U.S. Army, lived in Missouri and Wisconsin, migrated west in 1852, settled in what was Georgetown, 12 kids, died at age 86 in Sacramento. He was a blacksmith, buried in Franklin, California, so nearby, so attached to my attachment to Sacajawea and Lewis Clark. I saw his gravestone on a website.

Now for the so nearby, so unknown until now. I got my neighbor interested in Willard and Lewis and Clark. Unlike me he owned a car so he's in charge of the drive south.

We blast down I-5 South past the ever expanding suburbs and the still preserved wetlands for Franklin/Hood Road. Turn left for Franklin, farmland, a weathered sign for historic Franklin and sure enough, there is the cemetery right off of Franklin Boulevard.

We are initially stopped at a locked service gate, but there's got to be some entrance.

Sure enough, on Franklin Boulevard, a short empty parking lot inside a black iron fence with the well-kept green grass and the regimented headstones. Not a large cemetery, not tiny, small. A bit of a remarkable thrill to be here, from Montana and Idaho and most recently Astoria, Oregon, the national park of Fort Clatsop, where the Corps wintered in 1805, to here in Franklin.

Fine iron archway announcing Franklin Cemetery. What do you know? There are three fine, almost national park quality interpretive signs for Alexander Hamilton Willard, visual and script telling his life and Lewis and Clark story. Famous son of Franklin, formerly of Georgetown, California.

Quiet, nobody but us, chilly breeze blowing. One of the signs directs us to his grave.

Lush grass, worn headstones, Willard's a short, worn obelisk with family members and the man himself. No TV station, no librarian, no documentarian in Sacramento to my knowledge has ever mentioned him, “a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition!” I guess it's up to me to spread the word.

I leave a picture postcard of a now, for me, well known moment at Fort Clatsop during the Corps winter quarters: Captain Clark has Sacajawea give up her blue bead belt for some other pelts. Willard would recognize the moment. With it I leave my e-mail and phone number.

That done, we wandered through the gravestones, some nearly illegible from time and weather, the Chinese and Japanese stones most remarkable with their beautiful native lettering. You just never know unless you leave yourself open.

We leave through the Main Street town of Franklin as rustic as you can get, suspended in time, that sort of Sacramento Delta funkiness, wooden, with a King’s skate rink right out of James Dean's East of Eden.

Back north to Sacramento through the ever increasing Elk Grove suburbs, not exactly the Corps of Discovery, but what a discovery.

Postscript: Sacajawea's son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, who she carried on her back on her Lewis and Clark journey, lived and died in Auburn, brought there by the Gold Rush. Could he and Willard have ever met? We shall try to find out.

(Mike Koepf notes: Jean Baptiste Charbonneau is buried near Danner, Oregon. Not Auburn, California.)