early years and personal life

Zebulon Montgomery Pike was born in Lamberton, New Jersey (now part of Trenton)  on January 5, 1779. For the time period that he was born in, his family was pretty typical. He was the second of eight children, and the only one to grow to healthy adulthood. Four of his siblings died in infancy, the other three contracted tuberculosis and were deemed invalids throughout their lives. His father, Zebulon Pike Senior, had served in the military under George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Since then, His father continued to be involved in the military, and Zebulon Jr. learned many frontier skills from his time living at army outposts with his father.
 Zebulon had a limited education, but it is known that he did like to read and could speak a small amount of French and Spanish. By the age of fifteen, Zebulon entered his father's regiment as a cadet. His main duty as a cadet was to take supplies to frontier posts.
By the time Pike was twenty,  he was a first lieutenant in the First Infantry Regiment stationed in western Pennsylvania.  later, he fell in love to Clarissa Brown, his uncle and general's daughter. When General Brown refused permission for them to marry, the two eloped to Cincinnati in 1801.  Later, they got married and several children. However, only one of their daughters reached maturity.

After returning from the second expedition through a period of six years, Pike gets promoted to a colonel.  Pike then served in the War of 1812, and was killed in the attack on York (now Toronto) Canada, on April 17, 1813, by a piece of rock which fell on him when the British garrison in its retreat set fire to the powder magazine.