SAMUEL S. LEWIS
A Republic of Texas Ancestor
Of David Rolfe Wells,

2009 President of the Ephraim M. Daggett Chapter #35
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas

Samuel S. Lewis, early Texas settler and Congressman, was born to John and Sarah Lewis on July 4, 1784, in Virginia according to his son, Martin Baty Lewis’s handwritten Journal, in the Dallas Library.   He married Sarah LeMaster, born March 12, 1785, in Virginia, the daughter of John & Sarah LeMaster. They married in Henry County, Kentucky, on August 7, 1804. They moved to Clark, Orange and Green counties, Indiana, where their seven children were born: Martin Baty (married Nancy Moore), John T, Charlotte, Elizabeth, Ann, William McFarland, and Malinda.

Samuel Lewis founded Orleans, Indiana, and served as a lieutenant with the Indiana Militia in the War of 1812. In the mid-1820s the family moved to Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, where Samuel Lewis became Justice of the Peace. According to his Certificate of Character for Texas, by March 1832, he and his son, Martin Baty Lewis, had settled their families in the Bevil Municipality (now Jasper County) on Indian Creek in Texas.

Samuel Lewis served as lieutenant colonel in the Battle of Nacogdoches in 1832 under Col. James Bullock, and participated in the Siege of Bexar in 1835.  He was a Bevil delegate to the Consultation of 1835 and represented Jasper County in the First and Second Congresses of the Republic of Texas. He died during the Second Session of Congress on February 10,1838, at his plantation in Jasper County.   His death was mentioned by Sam Houston, and Houston called for a replacement of the deceased Samuel Lewis. 

David Rolfe Wells (great-great-great-great-grandson) #6464