Benjamin Lewis
Benjamin Lewis
Corporal Benjamin Lewis was a Billerica soldier of the Revolution who served in 1775, 1776 and 1777 and died in the war. Hazen's list of Billerica soldiers, drawn from the Massachusetts Archives, gives him those three years of service, the first with the men who turned out in 1775 and served in the army at Cambridge, the last in the campaign of 1777 against Burgoyne, and marks him as one of those who did not come home.
He belonged to the Lewis family of the east part of the town, but the records do not say which Benjamin he was. The family's head, the selectman Benjamin Lewis, died in September 1777 at seventy-three. His son Benjamin Lewis, born in 1729, who as "Benjamin Lewis Jr." had served toward Crown Point and Lake Champlain in 1758 and 1759, and his grandson Benjamin, born in 1753, who married Sarah Blanchard in July 1775, were both of an age to serve; Hazen records no death for either.
His name is on the Revolutionary War plaque that the Billerica Historical Society placed on the Meeting House Site Memorial on the Town Common in 2001 (dedicated on October 27 of that year), which names the fourteen Billerica soldiers known to have given their lives in the war.