| William Henry Ashley | |
| State: | Missouri |
| District: | at-large |
| Term Start: | October 31, 1831 |
| Term End: | March 3, 1837 |
| Predecessor: | Spencer D. Pettis |
| Successor: | John Miller |
| Office1: | 1st Lieutenant Governor of Missouri |
| Governor1: | William Clark Alexander McNair |
| Term Start1: | September 18, 1820 |
| Term End1: | November 15, 1824 |
| Predecessor1: | Position created |
| Successor1: | Benjamin Harrison Reeves |
| Birth Date: | 1778 |
| Birth Place: | Powhatan County, Virginia |
| Death Place: | Cooper County, Missouri |
| Branch: | Missouri Militia |
| Battles: | War of 1812 |
William Henry Ashley (c. 1778 – March 26, 1838) was an American miner, land speculator, manufacturer, territorial militia general, politician, frontiersman, fur trader, entrepreneur, hunter, and slave owner. Ashley was best known for being the co-owner with Andrew Henry of the highly-successful Rocky Mountain Fur Incorporated, otherwise known as "Ashley's Hundred" for the famous mountain men working for the firm from 1822 to 1834.[1]
Although born a native of Powhatan County, Virginia, William Ashley had already moved to Ste. Genevieve, in what was then a part of the Louisiana Territory, when it was purchased by the United States from France in 1803.
On a portion of this land, later known as Missouri, Ashley made his home for most of his adult life. Ashley moved to St. Louis around 1808 and became a brigadier general in the Missouri Militia during the War of 1812. Before the war, he did some real estate speculation and earned a small fortune manufacturing gunpowder from a lode of saltpeter mined in a cave, near the headwaters of the Current River in Missouri. When Missouri was admitted to the Union, William Henry Ashley was elected its first lieutenant governor, serving from 1820 to 1824 under Governor Alexander McNair. Ashley was a candidate in the 1824 Missouri gubernatorial election, losing to Frederick Bates.
In the early 1820s, William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry, a bullet maker he met through his gunpowder business, posted famous advertisements in St. Louis newspapers seeking one hundred "enterprising young men . . . to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years" to be hired at $200 a year. The men who responded to this call became known as "Ashley's Hundred." Between 1822 and 1825, Ashley and Henry's Rocky Mountain Fur Company sponsored several large scale fur trapping expeditions in the mountain west.
In 1823 Ashley's Hundred set off on their first expedition to the Rocky Mountains but their ammunition wagon, carrying 800 pounds of powder, blew up. Ashley's Hundred returned on a second trip but were driven back in a fight with the Arikara. Ashley was given a rifle made by Samuel Hawken which he took on this expedition, a 42 inch barrel predecessor of the Hawken rifle. Jedediah Smith's party, part of Ashley's Hundred, were officially credited with the American discovery of South Pass in the winter of 1824. Ashley devised the rendezvous system in which trappers, Indians and traders would meet annually in a predetermined location to exchange furs, goods and money. His innovations in the fur trade earned Ashley a great deal of money and recognition, and helped open the western part of the continent to American expansion.
In 1825, he led an expedition into the Salt Lake Valley. South of the Great Salt Lake, he came across Utah Lake, which he named Lake Ashley.[2] He established Fort Ashley on the banks to trade with the Indians. Over the next three years, according to 19th century historian Frances Fuller Victor, the fort "collected over one-hundred-and-eighty thousand dollars' worth of furs".[3] In late 1824, he explored present-day northern Colorado, ascending the South Platte River to the base of the Front Range, then ascending the Cache la Poudre River to the Laramie Plains and onward to the Green River.
On June 2, 1823, Ashley was beaten by Arikara Indians at their villages near the Grand River. Ashley reported twelve men killed and eleven wounded, of whom two died.[4]
In 1826, Ashley sold the fur trading company to a group including Jedediah Smith but continued supplying the company and brokering their furs. Upon the death of Spencer Darwin Pettis in August 1831, he was elected to finish out Pettis's term in the United States House of Representatives. As a member of the Jacksonian Party, Ashley won election to the seat in 1832 and re-election in 1834. In 1836, he declined to run for a fourth term in Congress, instead running unsuccessfully in the 1836 Missouri gubernatorial election. Many attribute his defeat to his increasingly pro-business stance in Congress, which alienated the rural Jacksonians. After the loss, he went back to making money on real estate, but his health declined rapidly.
On March 26, 1838, Ashley died of pneumonia at age 59. Ashley was buried atop a Native American burial mound in Lamine Township, Cooper County, Missouri, overlooking the juncture of the Lamine River and the Missouri River.
William H. Ashley is the namesake of the small community of Ashley, Missouri.[5] Also Ashley Falls[6] and Ashley Creek in northeast Utah, and the Ashley National Forest are named for him.[7]