Note I-47 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

This Frazer I do not doubt was a relative of the Robert Frazer, Frazier, Fraser, etc., who accompanied Lewis and Clark. The latter was a "Green Mountain boy," and it is highly improbable that two unrelated Frazers came from Vermont to the Western frontiers in the beginning of this century. But I can only conjecture what their degree of kinship was. One Joseph Jack Frazer cut a figure in early Minnesota history, if we may judge from the sketches of his life and adventures which ran through the columns of the St. Paul Pioneer, about 1866 or 1867, from the pen of General Henry Hastings Sibley. In this connection I may be permitted to note the fact, not generally known, that Robert Frazer was one of several annalists of that famous expedition, who went so far as to issue a MS. prospectus of a book he was going to publish about it, with Captain Lewis' own sanction. But this project failed for lack of subscribers to what any publisher would now be glad to accept, could the MSS. be found. See Prof. James D. Butler's review of my L. and C., N. Y. Nation, Oct. 26th and Nov. 2d, 1893.