In October 1809, William Clark, coleader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, visited Russellville with his family from October 3 to 7 while traveling to Louisville and farther east. Clark's niece, Benjamin and Eleanor Clark Temple, lived in Russellville. On October 21, 1809, the Russellville Farmer's Friend newspaper ran one of the first reports of the death of Meriwether Lewis, coleader of the expedition, taken from a Tennessee paper and detailing his suicide at an inn on the Natchez Trace.