James Lewis

James Lewis (1735 to 1810) was a Billerica man, a lieutenant of the town's minute-men on the eve of the Revolution, and a selectman for six years in the 1780s. He was born on September 25, 1735, the son of Benjamin Lewis, himself a selectman in the 1750s, and Elizabeth (Jaquith) Lewis. On January 3, 1760, he married Rebecca Brown, daughter of Lieut. Samuel Brown, on whose family farm the place later known as Patten's Mills grew up. The tax list of December 1776 places James Lewis and his father next to each other "Andover, near Salem Road," in the northeast part of the town.

In March 1775 the town voted to raise a company of fifty minute-men who would meet weekly for training, and the committee that chose its officers named Captain Ebenezer Bridge, with Jonathan Stickney and James Lewis as lieutenants; a few weeks later, on April 14, four days before the Lexington and Concord alarm, the town voted to "furnish the minute-men with Bayonets and Cartridge Boxes." Hazen's list of Billerica's Revolutionary soldiers records "Lt. James Lewis" among the men in service in 1775, a list that takes in the minute-men and those known to have been at Lexington and in the army at Cambridge. The winter that followed was hard on the family. His brother Ebenezer died in the army hospital at Cambridge on January 10, 1776, and within the same week two of his own children, Rizpah, aged seven, and Aaron, aged five, died, on January 9 and 12. His parents both died in the autumn of 1777, eight days apart.

He was elected a selectman in 1781, when the town was levying its last war taxes for soldiers and beef for the army and returning to payment in specie, and served again in 1785 and from 1787 to 1790. Of his children only James Lewis, who married Lucy Crosby, daughter of Hezekiah Crosby, in 1782, Rebecca and the second Seth grew up. In 1796 James Lewis and his wife moved to Groton, where their son James and his family also settled; the grandson James Lewis graduated from Dartmouth College in 1807 and practised law at Marlborough and Pepperell. James Lewis died at Groton on June 12, 1810, and Rebecca on January 1, 1814.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 91, LEWIS 5
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 234, minute-men of March 1775: officers Captain Ebenezer Bridge, Lieuts. Jonathan Stickney and James Lewis
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), list of soldiers from Billerica in the Revolutionary War: Lewis, Lt. James, service of 1775
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 249, tax list of December 1776: Lewis, James, residence Andover, near Salem Road
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 306, list of selectmen: James Lewis, 1781, 1785, 1787-90
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 92, LEWIS 7 (son James, removed to Groton 1796; grandson James, Dartmouth 1807)
7. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), births: James, s. Benjamin and Elizabeth Lewis, Sept. 25, 1735, and his children by Rebecca
8. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), marriages: James Lewes and Rebecca Brown, Jan. 3, 1760
9. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), deaths: Rizpah and Aaron, children of James and Rebecah Lewis, Jan. 9 and 12, 1776; Benjamin and Elizabeth Lewis, 1777
10. SAR Patriot Research System, P-235955: James Lewis (1735 to 1810), Massachusetts, First Lieutenant; Groton, Middlesex County