My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM W. LEWIS, who has been for many years closely identified with the industrial interests of Springfield, where he has established a cozy, well-appointed home, having in the pursuits of his calling won an independent competence, is a native of Clark County, and the son of one of its earliest pioneers, who bore an honorable part in developing its agriculture, and so aided in laying the basis of its material wealth.

Our subject was born in Moorefield Township, January 3, 1823, a son of Briton Lewis, a native of Shenandoah, Va. His father, James Lewis, who is supposed to have been a native of that State, removed from there to Kentucky, and there passed the remainder of his life. The maiden name of his wife was Mary Scott, and she was also a Virginian by birth. She spent her last years in Indianapolis, rounding out a life of ninety-five years.

The father of our subject was a boy of six years when his father died, and he then went to live with his maternal grandparents. At the age of fourteen the plucky, resolute little lad struck out into the world for himself, and came to Ohio in 1802, the year that the enabling act was passed, by which Ohio took its place in the Union as a State early in 1803. He was a boy and alone in the world, but was not long in finding employment and friends among the pioneer farmers of the sparsely settled territory, where the greater part of the land was owned by the Government, and for sale at $1.25 per acre. He labored assiduously, and when not at work he studiously spent his evenings and spare time with his books, as his school advantages were limited and he was ambitious to improve his education. In 1814, he had laid by money enough to become independent, and he wisely invested some of it in a tract of timber land in Moorefield Township, of which he thus became an early settler. He built a log cabin, cleared twenty acres of land, and then sold it at an advance, and bought another tract of timber land on section 10, of the same township, and four miles north of the Court-house. He located there at the time of his marriage, and there his wedded life was passed in the busy labors of the pioneer, in hewing out and cultivating a farm, which under his good management was finely improved, at the time of his death, in 1840. He was an intelligent, wide-awake man, of practical ability, and was of much assistance in developing the township, with whose interests he so early identified himself, and his death, when but little past the meridian of life, was a blow to its interests. The maiden name of the mother of our subject was Sally D. Ward, and she was born in Greenbrier County, Va., a daughter of Col. William and Elizabeth (Anderson) Ward. She resided on the farm some years after her husband’s death, and then came to Springfield, and was a beloved inmate of the home of a daughter till she died at the age of seventy-five years. She was the mother of six children — James, Rebecca, Mary, Cyrus, William W. and Eliza, of whom William and Cyrus are the only survivors.

William M. Lewis passed the early years of his life on the homestead where he was born in the this, his native county, and amid the influences of pioneer life grew to a stalwart, noble manhood. The present generation can have but little realization of what its ancestry suffered in preparing the way for the coming civilization that was to make this one of the leading commonwealths among the Central Western States, but our subject can attest to the truthfulness of the vivid pictures of those times drawn by Rufus King, in his “History of Ohio,” published in the Commonweatlh series. In writing of the face of the country, he speaks of the “happy intervening of rivers, valleys and uplands, with a soil nowhere sterile, but generally rich or fertile, covered with forests or open woodlands, spreading out in many parts into savannas or natural meadows, formerly known as prairies.” He alludes to the life of sacrifice, toil, and often hardship, which the pioneers were obliged to lead here in the upbuilding of their homes in the primeval wilds; and tells of the rude log cabins that sheltered them, with clapboard roof, with or without a door, as it happened, with a patch of greased newspaper pasted over the hole made by the removal of a part of a log to serve as a window, and often with no floor but the ground, the whole structure, perhaps, erected in a day, on the spot where the tall forest trees, from which the material was taken, stood in the morning.

He says of the new-comers into the State, “Their first necessity was to girdle the trees and grub a few acres for a corn crop and truck patch, sufficient for a season.” After telling of the variety of game that furnished forth the pioneer’s table, he speaks of the value of Indian corn as a food, and speaks of the delicious hoe-cake, ash-cake, johnny-cake, etc., which the thrifty housewives made of it, and further says, “This crop, convertable also into bacon, pork and whiskey, soon became the staple of the country.” He says that there was no bread nor salt in those days, excepting that a small and precious supply of the latter was furnished by the scanty salt springs. But the pioneer life had its compensations, it was not all one dismal round of toil. The early settlers had their pastimes and festivities, such as the militia musters, the sugar camp, the bear hunts, shooting matches, the quarter race, house raisings, quilting bees, etc. And their life had its amenities, in that by common experience of hardship and toil they were bound more closely together than otherwise would have happened, and by their struggles with the forces of nature they were taught self-reliance, and were better fitted for the responsibilities of after life.

To return to our subject; he received his education in the primitive log schoolhouse of the times, with its rude furniture, and as soon as large enough assisted his father on the farm, and remained an inmate of the parental household till his twenty-fifth year. He then came to Springfield, and the ensuing two years carried on the grocery business, and then worked at house-painting, and later engaged in painting machinery for the Buckeye shops, and was employed there twenty-five years, having the work under contract, he being a superior artisan in his line. In time, by judicious management of his money, he placed himself among the substantial citizens of Springfield. In 1866 he bought a lot, finely located on Chestnut Avenue, and in 1873 built his present commodious and well furnished residence.

June 27, 1844, Mr. Lewis was married to Miss Sarah J. White, a native of South Wales, and a daughter of John and Annie (Jones) White, natives respectively of England and Wales. Ten children were born to our subject of this marriage, of whom the following eight are living: Gertrude, wife of Hiram L. Hull; Mary, Florence, Elizabeth, William, Leon, Charles B. and Earl M. Albert and Sarah J. are deceased.

August 26, 1888, death crossed the thresehold of the home of our subject, and when he went forth again the faithful wife and kind mother accompanied him into the great unknown, leaving a desolate family to mourn her loss.

“Her work is compassed and done,
All things are seemly and ready,
And her summer is just begun.
But we cannot think of her idle;
She must be a home-maker still,
And somewhere, yet, in the hilltops
Of the country that hath no pain
She will watch in her beautiful doorway.
To greet her loved ones again.”
A. D. T. Whitney.