American general, born in Donegal, Ireland; when very young, was brought to America by his parents, who settled at Bellefonte, VA. He was a volunteer in the Ohio campaign in 1754; commanded the Sandy Creek expedition in 1756; was captured by the French at Fort Duquesne in 1758; appointed Virginia commissioner to make treaty with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix in 1768; was made brigadier-general in 1774, and defeated the Shawnee Confederacy at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. He took part in the convention of 1775, and, at the request of Washington, in 1776 was appointed brigadier-general by Congress, and put in command of the expedition to dislodge Lord Dunmore from Gwynn’s Island. Owing to ill health, he retired from the army in 1777, and died in Bedford County, VA, on the 26th of September 1781. General Lewis’s statue is one of the cluster around the Washington monument in Richmond.
