Meriwether Lewis died insolvent with his drafts refused by the War Department, and 198 relatives have not been allowed to exhume his body

Three years after the expedition, Meriwether Lewis was governor of Upper Louisiana and owed money. On 16 June 1809 he drew an $81 bill on the Secretary of War, William Eustis. Eustis refused it, saying Lewis had no authority to draw it. Lewis received notice of the refusal in August 1809. He set out for Washington to defend his expenses. On the night of 10 October he stopped at Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles from Nashville. By the early hours of 11 October he was dead from gunshot wounds to the head and abdomen. He was 35 and had no children. He was buried hastily beside the trail. In 1810 his administrator, Edward Hempstead, reported the estate insolvent, and Pierre Chouteau sued it. In December 1809 William Clark went to Washington to settle Lewis's rejected bills and secure the expedition journals. Tennessee put up a monument over the grave in 1848, and in 1925 the site came under the National Park Service. In June 1996 a coroner's jury recommended exhumation. The Park Service refused in January 1998. In early 2008 Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty wrote that exhumation was "appropriate and in the public interest." By 2009, 198 relatives descended from Lewis's sisters were pushing for it and planned to raise $250,000. Interior rescinded the approval in 2010^†. The body is still under the monument in 2026^†.