Warner writes to his brother Gabriel asking him, on his arrival in St. Louis, to inquire of General William Rector (Surveyor General of the Missouri and Arkansas Territories, 1814-1824) about abandoned government lands he had acquired four years before.

      “… If your time permits and any of the lands I am interested in should be near St. Louis, pray ride out and view them – let me recommend for your own particular satisfaction a ride to St. Charles and don’t forget the prospect from the Hill of Mount M – you see from thence the River Missouri and Mississippi, and the State of Illinois – the prospect is worth 200 miles ride at least …”

      The Lewis brothers were grandsons of a Revolutionary War Colonel, who was George Washington’s brother-in-law. They came to Kentucky in the 1790s, Gabriel to survey lands owned by the ex-President before his death. Their father had a ten thousand acre Kentucky land grant, but lost it to squatters. Warner drowned in the Wabash River in Indiana ten years later.