Francis Lewis

Biography

Francis Lewis was born in Llandaff, Wales. He was orphaned when he was about five years old and was raised by his aunt, a woman of comfortable means. She saw to it that he was educated in London at the notable Westminster School. As a young man he worked in a mercantile house and decided to make a life as a merchant. At 21, he came into some land as his inheritance from his father. He promptly sold this property in order to finance the purchase of goods to sell in the colonies. He arrived in New York in 1734 or 1735, sold some of his goods there, and headed to Philadelphia to sell the rest. He would soon travel to St. Petersburg, Scotland, and Africa to sell or acquire inventory, but he decided to make New York his home.

During the French and Indian War of the 1750s and early 1760s, Lewis supplied uniforms to the British. He was completing a sale at Fort Oswego in August 1756 when French forces attacked. The fort surrendered and Lewis found himself a prisoner of France’s Indian allies. Rather than killing Lewis, the tribal leaders decided to reunite him with his family. The French, however, had other ideas; they took him to France where he remained a prisoner until Britain’s victory in 1763. The British government granted him 5,000 acres of land in New York as compensation for the loss of seven years of his life.

Britain’s generosity did not secure Lewis’s loyalty to the Mother Country. During the postwar years, he became increasingly concerned about the direction Parliament was taking in its policies toward the colonies. He earned a reputation as one of the most committed political radicals in New York City, attending the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, and helping to organize the city’s protest organization, the Sons of Liberty. By 1774, in the wake of the closing of Boston’s port by Parliament, Lewis became a member of the Committee of Fifty, which now effectively ran New York City. He was a member of the provincial convention that set up the colony’s new government. When the Continental Congress was formed in the Fall of 1774, Francis Lewis was one of New York’s delegates.

In 1775, when the Second Continental Congress began its debate over independence, Lewis was present, representing New York along with Philip Livingston, Lewis Morris, and William Floyd. Their delegation was hamstrung by the absence of any clear instructions from New York’s government. Without knowing how they were expected to vote on Richard Henry Lee’s resolution on July 2nd, all they could do was abstain on both the Lee resolution and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Fortunately, within a few days after the other colonies had approved the Declaration by a vote of 12-0, the much-desired authorization arrived from their home government. On August 2, Francis Lewis was pleased to join his fellow delegates in Congress as they signed Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

Like his fellow signers, Lewis knew that he might be a target of the British army. He did not have long to wait. In the summer of 1776, after the British victory in the Battle of Brooklyn, the Lewis home in Queens was attacked. It was ransacked, with books and personal papers destroyed and furniture broken. Lewis’s wife Elizabeth was arrested and imprisoned. Although she was eventually part of a prisoner exchange, the experience ruined her health, and she died in 1779.

Francis Lewis continued to serve in Congress until 1779, the year of his wife’s death. As a delegate, he signed the Articles of Confederation. At the same time, he rebuilt his mercantile business with his son and namesake as his partner. His old age passed peacefully and was spent in the company of his books and his grandchildren. He died on December 31, 1802.