Colonel Andrew Lewis

Lewis, Andrew, Colonel, an American revolutionary soldier, was born in Ulster about 1730. His father, descended from a Huguenot family of settlers, removed to America, shortly after Andrew's birth, in consequence of having been engaged in an agrarian disturbance, and was the first white settler in Augusta County, Virginia. Andrew was endowed with great bodily vigour and a commanding presence. He was a volunteer in the expedition to take possession of the Ohio region in 1754; served with Washington at the surrender of Fort Necessity; was Major in his brother Samuel's company at Braddock's defeat; commanded the Sandy Creek expedition in 1756; and in the unfortunate expedition of Major Grant in October 1758, was made prisoner and taken to Montreal.

In 1768 he was appointed commissioner to treat with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix; and in 1774 he was made Brigadier-General, and commanded the Virginia troops at Point Pleasant, gaining a victory over the most formidable Indian force that ever assembled in the Old Dominion. He was a member of the conventions of March and June 1775; and was made Colonel in the War of the Revolution. He drove Lord Dunmore from Gwynne's Island, and was on duty in the lower part of the State, when he contracted a fever of which he died, in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1780. Drake says: "His military abilities were highly valued by Washington; and his statue fills one of the pedestals around the Washington monument at Richmond. His brothers, all distinguished in the military annals of the State, were Samuel, Thomas, Charles, and William."

Sources

37a. Biographical Dictionary—American Biography: Francis S. Drake. Boston, 1876.