The Mystery of the Lewises

Top: Sarah Ann (Bishop) Lewis, William Thomas Lewis

Bottom: Susannah Lewis, Laura Lillian Lewis

Photo courtesy of Lewis Harvey, Susannah's grandson

Update 3 Apr 2016:

Through the diligent sleuthing of cousin Lewis Harvey, we have discovered that William Thomas Lewis had at least one, and perhaps two, brothers. The death certificate for brother John tells us John was born in 1850 in Toronto, Canada. His obituary in the Saginaw Daily News (July 1922) tells us he reached Saginaw by 1865.

Importantly, John's death certificate also reports Nicholas Lewis (of New York) as John's father, and Margaret French (of Ireland) as his mother. So there is at least one additional substantiating source for Nicholas and Margaret.

John's second wife was Phebe Duele. Phebe had at least one sister. Phebe died in the mid-1930s. John had two children, Willie and Gertie. Both died too young to leave issue, in circumstances that must have been nearly unendurable for dear Uncle John and Aunt Phebe. It's too sad to write about here; you can check out my ancestry.com tree for details.

The 1880 US Census for Tittabawasee Township, Saginaw County, Michigan shows John, Phebe, Willie and Gertie, as well as Stephen Lewis, who is listed as John's brother. John is shown as 26, and Stephen as 22.

Research in 1850s Canadian records has revealed nothing yet.

John and William (together with some other Lewises) are buried in the Freeland, Michigan cemetery. Freeland adjoins Saginaw.

So, Nicholas and Margaret are still the Lewis brick wall. But at least we have some additional documentary support for them, as well as for our ancestral name of Lewis.

End of update. Original post follows.

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One of the challenges facing genealogical researchers is what is known as the "brick wall." This refers to the situation where there are no available records that allow the researcher to determine lineage beyond a certain ancestor.

The photo above shows the Lewis brick wall: William Thomas Lewis, who is my 2nd Great-Grandfather.

I have been trying to trace my family lines back to the original immigrants to America. I have been successful with a lot of them (mostly because I can borrow from the hard work of other genealogists, including Aunt Dianne,) but a few remain a mystery.

One of the mysteries: Where did our Lewises come from?



From my YDNA testing, I can say with certainty that our Lewises came from Western Europe, but so far I don't know anything more definitive. There are Lewis lineages that trace to England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, and the Iberian peninsula. The specific European genesis of our Lewises is a riddle which may never be solved.

Nor is it even clear that our ancestral name was Lewis. Here's what we do know.

William was born in 1848 in NY (possibly Watertown), and died 1917 in Frederic, MI. I have pieced together the date (and possible town) of birth from two sources. First is William's death certificate:

This document tells us William was a "retired merchant." I can confirm this particular datum from a reliable source: I remember my Grandpa Lewis pointing out the family store a couple times when we were passing through Frederic during those blissful summers in Lewiston. I remember him saying his grandfather started and ran the store. So far so good; this confirms William is our ancestor.

Second, genealogical notes prepared by Grandpa Lewis's mother says William was born in Watertown.

Sarah (Bishop) Lewis

The person attesting to the information in the death certificate is "Mrs. WT Lewis" of Frederic, Michigan. William's wife was Sarah Ann (Bishop) Lewis, who is standing next to William in the top photo.

Sarah's parents, Samuel and Catherine (Wilson) Bishop, were immigrants from England who married in Michigan in 1851. Sarah was born 1853 in Michigan. She died 1938 in Saginaw, and she knew both Dad and Uncle Richard when they were little.

Here is a photo of Dad and Uncle Rich with their great-grandmother Sarah. My Grandpa Lewis is holding Rich, and my Dad is holding Sarah's hand. The other adult man in the photo is Samuel Albert Lewis, who was Grandpa Lewis's uncle. Samuel Albert was Sarah's son; Grandpa Lewis was her grandson.

Albert, Sarah, Russell S., Russell E., Richard

It's a bad, rather spooky, photo of Sarah (so is the one at the top), but we gotta roll with what we've got, and this is all we've got.

Who Are William's Parents?

Back to the death certificate. The father's name is not written clearly. It is perhaps Nicholas, Nickolas, or even Nichlis. See if you can make it out. Lousy handwriting, to be sure, but is it an error? Just an odd name? You know as much as I do. The father's place of birth is marked as "Not Known." No help there.

The mother's name is shown as Margaret French; she is identified as being from Ireland. There were several Margaret Frenchs from Ireland, but none of them match up with what we know, so this information doesn't get us very far.

I have searched and searched for William's parents. I've found a couple leads, which I discuss below, but William remains the current Lewis brick wall.

From what we do know, there are several possibilities about William's parentage. Some of these possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

One possibility is that Margaret French was not married to the father. I think this is highly likely. Another is that the father either abandoned Margaret and William, or died very early in William's life. I think this is also highly likely.

Another possibility is that Margaret did not know who the father was, and just picked a name. This is possible. So our actual ancestral name may not even be Lewis. We just don't know right now.

There are a few scraps of information that suggest William was born out of wedlock. The first scrap is from Grandpa Lewis's mother, Lenora (Baker) Lewis. She went by the name Nora. I barely remember her from when I was a very young child.

At some point, Nora spoke with one of William's children, a daughter named Rose Margaret (Lewis) Haas. Here is a picture of Rose and her husband.

Alfred and Rose Margaret (Lewis) Haas
Photo courtesy of Lewis Harvey, my 2d cousin 1x removed

Isn't that a nice photo? They look like happy people.

Rose's middle name suggests there was a Margaret in her lineage, and I have found no Margarets on Sarah's side. So William's mother's name might well actually have been named Margaret.

Nora wrote down the family history she learned from Rose. While the notes tell us about Sarah's parents and the children of William and Sarah, they say nothing about William's parents. The absence of information may mean nothing - or it may mean his parentage was a secret that neither Rose nor anyone else knew about or would talk about.

The fact that Sarah Lewis did not know the origin of the father suggests that William knew little about him, as presumably this is the sort of information he would have told his wife.

There are a few more scraps in the census records.

Early Census Records

A primary tool in genealogical research is the decennial US census. The censuses are sometimes inaccurate - either the householder didn't know the right information, the census taker was sloppy or lazy or not particularly literate, or some combination of these. But when completed properly, they give us a snapshot which is sometimes useful.

There are two New York censuses where the name William Lewis appears and where the age given appears to correlate with our William.

William was reportedly born in 1848, so in the 1850 census, he would have been two years old. Here is an image from the 1850 census of Steuben County, New York.

Highlighted in yellow we see a William Lewis at age 2. The householder's name is Charles Smith, age 26, who is a laborer. His wife, Anna, is also age 26. There is also a woman identified as Margaret Tufts, age 18. If this is our Margaret and our William, Margaret would have been about 16 at the time of his birth.

If this is our William and our Margaret - I have no way of telling for sure - then he was born out of wedlock. That was of course highly stigmatized in those days. Stigma leads to secrets, and secrets lead to brick walls.

In 1860, we have to look at two census pages from Chenango County to see someone who may be our William. (These are consecutive pages in the census; the family just happened to be split between the pages.)

In 1860, we see a William Lewis, age 12 and born in New York, living with James and Hannah Low, who were born in England. There is a baby, Charles Low, born in New York, who appears to be the son of James and Hannah Low.

James Low is shown as a farmer, and at age 12, William was old enough to hire on as a hand. There is no Margaret, but perhaps she had died by this time, or lived nearby.

An historical footnote: Note that the top of the pages refer to censuses of "Free Inhabitants." Slavery was still legal during these censuses. The loathsome Dred Scott opinion, which held that black people were excluded from any Constitutional protection, occurred in 1857, between these two censuses shown above. The reason censuses differentiated free inhabitants from slaves was that for purposes of apportioning Congressional representation, a freeman or a freewoman counted as one person, and slaves counted as three-fifths of a person. That's called the Three-Fifths Compromise.

One more footnote: In the days of these censuses, it was common to abbreviate "ditto" as "Do." That's why you see that word so often in the 1860 census.

On to Michigan

By 1870, I see a Thomas Lewis, age 23, living in Saginaw, Michigan. This household seems to be a boarding house, as it has a bunch of unrelated folks living in it. My surmise is that William may have been known by his middle name by this time.

Two years later, on 21 Nov 1872, William married Sarah in Saginaw. On 20 Sep 1874, their first child, my great-grandfather, Thomas Emmett Lewis (who was called Emmett all his life), was born. Emmett died sometime during or after 1953. The only reason I know he died that late is because there is a photo of him with Clint. I can't find a death certificate.

Here's the photo: four generations of Lewis men, though Lewis may not be their (or my) real ancestral name. Maybe one day we will know for sure.

Emmett, Clint, Dad, Grandpa