Francis Lewis
Francis Lewis was born at Landaff, in the Glamorgan, South Wales shire, in March 1713. His father was an Episcopal clergyman; his mother was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Pettingal of the same sect who officiated at Cærnarvonshire in North Wales. Francis was an only child and lost his parents when he was only fifteen. A maternal aunt named Llawelling became his guardian. She had him early instructed in the Cymraeg language, which he never lost, and later sent him to live with a relative in Scotland, where he learned the original Celtic language. Afterward, he entered the Westminster School in London and became an excellent classical scholar. He then entered a counting house and became thoroughly acquainted with the entire routine of commercial transactions, which prepared him to enter into business understandingly and with safety.Lewis inherited a small fortune, which he laid out in merchandise, and embarked for New York, where he arrived in the spring of 1735. In New York, he partnered with Edward Annesley but left with him some of his goods and went to Philadelphia. At the end of two years, he settled permanently in New York and married Elizabeth Annesley.
Commercial transactions frequently called Mr. Lewis to the principal ports of Europe and the Shetland and Orkney Islands. He was shipwrecked twice on the coast of Ireland. His great industry, spotless integrity, and skill in business gave him a high position in commercial circles, showing clearly the great advantage derived from a thorough apprenticeship in business before a young man sets up for himself.
At the commencement of the French war, he was the agent for supplying the British army with clothing. At the gory attack and reduction of Oswego by the French troops under Gen. Dieskau, Mr. Lewis stood beside Colonel Mersey when the Colonel was killed. Lewis was then captured by the Indians and held for a long time. The British government granted him five hundred acres of land as a small compensation.
Lee was a distinguished and active member of the Colonial Congress that assembled in New York in the autumn of 1765 to devise mature measures to effectuate a redress of injuries—a petition to the King and House of Commons and a memorial to the House of Lords. The language was respectful, but every line breathed a firm determination no longer to yield to injury and insult.
. In 1771, Mr. Lewis visited England and became familiar with the feelings and designs of the British ministry, convinced that the infant Colonies in America could never enjoy their inalienable rights until they severed the parental ties that bound them to the mother country. On all proper occasions, he communicated his views to the friends of freedom and did much to awaken his fellow citizens to a just sense of impending dangers.
When the Continental Congress convened on April 22, 1775, Lewis was unanimously elected a member by the delegates. He immediately repaired to the Keystone City and entered upon the essential duties assigned to him. The following year, he was continued in Congress and recorded his name on the Chart of Independence. He continued as a member of Congress until April 1779, when he obtained a leave of absence. During the Revolutionary War, much of his property was destroyed by British troops.
Not content with destroying the property of Mr. Lewis, the British seized his unprotected wife and placed her in close confinement without a bed, a change of clothes, and almost without food. And was exposed to the cowardly and gross insults of wretches who were degraded so far below the wild man of the wilderness that could an Archimedean lever of common decency have been applied to them with Heaven for a fulcrum and Gabriel to operate it, they could not have been raised, in a thousand years, to the grade of common courtesy. No true American can trace the cruelties of the British troops during the times that verily tried men and women's souls without having his blood rush back upon his aching heart—his indignation roused to a boiling heat.
Mrs. Lewis was retained in prison for several months and finally exchanged, through the exertions of General Washington, for a Mrs. Barrow, the wife of a British paymaster retained for the express purpose but treated most respectfully and made perfectly comfortable with a respectable family. The base imprisonment of Mrs. Lewis caused her premature death.