Our first Ida Johnson Lecture Series program will feature Shannon Kelly, Associate Editor for the Montana Historical Society’s Montana:  The Magazine of Western History and member of Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance Board of Directors. 

Shannon will discuss the friendship between Meriwether Lewis and Alexander Wilson and their contributions to ornithology. Born in Scotland, Wilson was a weaver, poet, and labor advocate before moving to the United States. Starting as a schoolteacher in his new home, he quickly became a renown naturalist and artist, publishing some of the first books on North American birds by someone living there. Wilson was the only friend of Lewis known to have visited the explorer’s Tennessee burial place and the first to fully document Priscilla Grinder’s account of Lewis’s death. Wilson’s dedication to nature and science earned him the nickname the Father of American Ornithology. 

This FREE monthly speaker series put in in conjunction with the Portage Route Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance will take place on the second Tuesday of September, October, November, January, February, March, and April. Ida Johnson (1934–2020) was a beloved educator, community leader, and honored member of the Portage Route Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation and the Corps of Volunteers with the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.