In 1802, William Ashley migrated to Missouri and began working as a fur trader and merchant. He became a miner and a surveyor.
During the War of 1812, he was a Lieutenant Colonel and promoted Brigadier General of militia in 1821.
He moved to St. Louis in 1819, was elected lieutenant governor of Missouri in 1820 (under Governor Alexander McNair, and formed the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Company. He was the first to manage organized beaver trapping by white settlers, where previous fur traders purchased pelts from Indians. Ashley devised the system of rendezvous between the fur trappers and fur buyers. This innovation ushered in the “golden age” of Rocky Mountain fur trading. While not a mountain man himself per se, he did more to ensure that mountain men existed, and still hold sway in our consciousnesses today.
In 1826, he sold his trapping business, to pursue politics and was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-second Congress, reelected to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses serving from October 31, 1831, to March 3, 1837.
In 1832 William married Elizabeth Moss. They would have no children.
He died of pneumonia and was buried near his home in an Indian mound overlooking the Missouri River, on the Lamine River, in Cooper County, Missouri.
Ashley, Missouri is named in his honor.
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Categories: Namesakes US Municipalities | Indian Burial Mound, Lamine Township, Cooper County, Missouri | Rocky Mountain Fur Company