Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lewis, Andrew
LEWIS, ANDREW (1720?–1781), soldier, born in Donegal about 1720, was son of John Lewis by Margaret Lynn. The father, who is said to have been of Huguenot descent, killed his landlord soon after his son's birth and fled to America, where he settled in Bellefont, Augusta county, Virginia, and founded the town of Staunton. Andrew Lewis early became notable for his bravery in the frontier wars with the Indians, and served as a volunteer in the Ohio expedition of 1754. He was major in Washington's Virginia regiment at the surrender of Fort Necessity and at the defeat, on 9 July 1755, of Major-general Edward Braddock [q. v.] In 1756 he commanded the Sandy Creek expedition against the Shawnesse Indians. In 1758 he served with Major James Grant's expedition to Fort Duquesne, was in the defeat on 14 Sept., and was taken prisoner and detained at Montreal. He was one of the commissioners who concluded a treaty with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, New York, in 1768. In 1774 he was appointed brigadier-general on the western frontiers of Virginia, and commanded the colonists at the battle of Point Pleasant, 10 Oct. 1774, an important engagement, in which his brother Charles was killed. In March and June 1775 he was a delegate to the Virginia conventions. Lewis took the popular side in the war of independence, and from 1 March 1776 to 5 April 1777 was brigadier-general of the continental army, and on 9 July 1776 dislodged Lord Dunmore from Gwynn's Island. He resigned his command on the ground of ill-health, and died at Colonel Talbot's house in Bedford county, Virginia, while on his way to his home on the Roanoke River, on 26 Sept. 1781. He was married and a son, Charles, predeceased him. His statue, by Crawfurd, stands on one of the pedestals of the Washington monument at Richmond, Virginia, which was unveiled in 1858. Lewis's orderly book was edited, with notes, by C. C. Campbell, Richmond, 1860. Besides Charles, his brothers Thomas (1718–1790) and William Lewis (1724–1811) were distinguished Virginian colonists, the one as a member of the Virginian assemblies, the other as a soldier.
[Appleton's Cycl. of Amer. Biog.; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. 151–6; Virginia Historical Collections, vols. iii. and iv. new ser. (Dinwiddie Papers), passim; Campbell's Hist. of Virginia, p. 588; Winsor's Hist. of America, vi. 168, vii. 580.]