Private John Boley

John Boley was born in Pittsburg and was living at Fort Kaskaskia, Illinois in 1803. He got in trouble at Camp Wood and so the captains made him one of the "return party" - He only went as far as the Mandan Villages and helped bring the journals and scientific discoveries of the first year back to St. Louis in the spring of 1805. But his adventures were not over. When he returned to St. Louis, he volunteered to go on another journey with a lieutenant named Zebulon Pike. They traveled up the Mississippi River to find its source, and camped in freezing cold Minnesota for the winter. In the spring of 1806 they returned to St. Louis, but Pike was sent out once again and Boley went with him. This time they went out across the Kansas plains. Pike's party split in western Kansas. Most of them went on to explore Colorado and got captured by the Spanish. Boley was part of the party that went down the Arkansas River and returned to St. Louis. He later married and settled in Carondelet, Missouri.