Andrew Lewis, born in Donegal, Ireland, about 1730, was of Huguenot
descent, his father coming to this country in 1732, and being the
first white resident in Bellefonte, Augusta County, Virginia. In 1754,
he joined an expedition to take possession of the lands lying along
the Ohio, in which he acquired great reputation by his conduct at
Braddock’s defeat in 1755, and for the part he took in all the Indian
wars down to the time of the Revolution. He served under Washington in
various capacities, and was with him at Fort Necessity. He commanded an
expedition to Sandy Creek in 1756, and was made prisoner in 1758 and
taken to Montreal. In 1768, he acted as commissioner from Virginia,
to conclude a treaty with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, New York.
“About 1775, when hostilities began again on the western frontier of
Virginia, he received the appointment of brigadier-general, and as
commander-in-chief at the battle of Point Pleasant, at the mouth of
the Great Kanawha, gained a victory over the Shawnee confederacy under
the celebrated chief Cornstalk” in what was considered the severest
engagement with the Indians up to that time.
On the 1st of March, 1776, Congress made Lewis a brigadier-general,
much to the surprise and disappointment of Washington, who considered
him entitled to a higher rank; and Lewis himself felt that he had been
slighted, but his patriotism triumphed, and he accepted the inferior
position. Ill health, however, caused him to tender his resignation
on the 15th of April, 1777; but afterward he accepted a commission to
treat with the Indians at Fort Pitt. On his way home from the Ohio,
he was seized with a fever, and died in Bedford County, Virginia, on
the 26th of September, 1780, when only forty miles from his home on the
Roanoke River. His statue occupies one of the pedestals at the base of
the Washington monument in Richmond.