John Ordway

John Ordway (* 1775 in New Hampshire; † around 1817 in the United States) was Sergeant in the United States Army and a major participant of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the first American overland expedition to the Pacific coast.

With several other soldiers he came across as a sergeant in the summer of 1803 in the garrison Fort Kaskaskia on the Ohio River on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. John Ordway was one of the few educated men in the expedition, and was often the deputy of Lewis and Clark in their absence.

He was responsible for the issue of equipment, the division of security guard services and the custody of documents. In the first months of the research expedition came several times to the disobedience of the soldiers against John Ordway.

When Clark on the way back from the Pacific in the summer of 1806 the Yellowstone River and the Marias River Lewis explored, Ordway led a group of ten men on the Jefferson River back to Missouri. He organized by Sergeant Gass transporting the previously abandoned in the mountains of the Rocky Mountains in boats on the difficult overland passage at the falls of the Missouri.

During the expedition, he wrote diaries, which he sold for $ 300 at Lewis and Clark. John Ordway, who had grown up with nine siblings, married after the end of the expedition in New Hampshire and moved to 320 acres of land on the Missouri River, which he had received as a reward for his services. He spent the last years of his life on the farm as a successful landowner.