Lewis, William, 1620 - 1690

William Lewis, Jr., was born in England in 1620. He migrated to New England in 1632 on board the ship Lion with his with his parents William and Felix Lewis. He settled in Newtown (i.e. Cambridge), Massachusetts, before moving with his parents to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Farmington, where he became the first recorder of the town of (1645) and recorded on Jan. 18, 1667, the agreement between the colony of Connecticut and the Tunxis Indians (1650). Earlier, on Feb. 8, 1657, he and Samuel Steel had signed a deed with a group of Indians for a tract of land that might have included Litchfield, Plymouth, and Harwinton. In 1665, he was appointed captain of the trainband militia in Farmington, a position to which he was reappointed in 1667 and 1674. Later, he served as one of the town’s deputies to the General Court (1680-87, 1689-90). He married first, Mary Hopkins, daughter of William Hopkins, around 1644; and second, Mary Cheever, daughter of Ezekiel Cheever of New Haven and Boston on Nov. 22, 1671.

 

Sandra S. Olney, Passengers on the "Lion" From England to Boston, 1632, and Five Generations of their Descendants (Westminster, Md: Heritage Books, Inc., 2008), 353-55; Simeon Dunham Lewis, Book VXIII of the Genealogy of the Lewis family (Buffalo, C.W. Moulton, 1891), 7-8; William Richard Cutter, ed., American Biography; A New Cyclopedia.  New York: American Historical Society, 1916-), vol. 12, 367; William F. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York, from the Earliest Historic Times to the Beginning of 1907 (2 vols., New York, Chicago: Pioneer Publishing Company, 1908), vol. 1, 604.Publishing Company, 1908), vol. 1, 604.