William Henry Ashley, recently the lieutenant governor of Missouri, joins Andrew Henry—a bullet maker he had met through his gunpowder business—in posting 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."

The men who responded to this call will become known as "Ashley's Hundred."

Twenty-three year old Jedediah Strong Smith, originally of western New York, is a member of Ashley’s party.

Ashley, although born a native of Powhatan County, Virginia, 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 had made his home for most of his adult life.

Ashley had moved to St. Louis around 1808 and became a Brigadier General in the Missouri Militia during the War of 1812.

Before the war, he had done 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, Ashley had been elected its first Lieutenant Governor, serving, from 1820 under Governor Alexander McNair.