Lillian Ruth Colter-Frick was the great-great-great-granddaughter of John Colter, who was the first white man to report the wonders of Yellowstone National Park. and the fourth man to be chosen to travel to the Pacific Ocean with Lewis and Clark. She lives in Washington, Missouri along the Missouri River near her ancestor's home. She has researched the life and times of John Colter, the men of the Corps of Discovery and early fur trade on the Missouri River since 1954. The primary purpose in writing "Courageous Colter and Companions" was to inform the descendants of John Colter that they had an extraordinary ancestor. During the research she found that the story of John Colter involved other Americans whose place in history needed to be defined.

Grace Darling Lewis Miller was a St. Louis historian that spent forty years of her life researching the life and times of Meriwether Lewis. L. Ruth Colter-Frick organized and wrote the finding aid for the Grace Lewis Miller Collection as a volunteer for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives. The collection contains about sixty boxes and one-hundred books. Besides the forty years of her own research, additional information was discovered in the Grace Lewis Miller Collection.

In June of 1996, she was subpoenaed to testify at the inquest at Lewis County, Tennessee concerning the circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis. She was also selected to make a presentation to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Ruth passed away in her sleep on Nov. 9, 1999 while at a Lewis and Clark convention in St. Charles, Mo. She is dearly remembered and missed by many.

The book "Courageous Colter and Companions" has been a labor of love for her family, but can be read and appreciated by all that are interested in John Colter, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the fur trade and the history of the West.