Chambers County Alabama Photos......Elder Lewis Towers
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http://theusgenweb.org/al/chambers/
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Contributed by Harold Young Aug 2005
Elder Lewis Towers
1804 - 1855
Baptist Minister
Engraving ca. 1850
Lewis Towers was born on Conaross Creek, Pendleton District, South Carolina on 11 June 1804 to
William and Sarah (Aiken) Towers. He remained in the Pendleton District until the age of twelve.
He went with the family to Hightower River in the Cherokee Nation, then to Gwinnette County, Georgia,
and finally at the age of seventeen to Stone Mountain, DeKalb County, Georgia. His father,
Capt. William Towers, lead a company in the battle of New Orleans with Andrew Jackson during
the War of 1812.
Lewis’s early education was spotty due to his location on the frontier and wilderness country. However,
he obtained a tolerable knowledge of arithmetic and English. At the age of 21 he worked as a cabinetmaker
and claims to have been very proficient. At the age of 24 he attended a Presbyterian camp meeting near
the Chattahoochee River where he was baptized into the faith. He became a Baptist but finding no
institution of higher learning of that denomination, he entered the Southern and Western Theological
Seminary, a Presbyterian institution, in Maryville, Tennessee (now Maryville College). He finished his
studies and returned to Georgia in 1838. For the next couple of years he worked as a teacher in DeKalb,
and then Harris Counties to repay the debts he incurred while attending seminary in Tennessee.
On 13 December 1840, after all debts had been repaid, he married a fellow teacher, Miss Louisa
Flavilla Packard.
Louisa was born in Winthrop, Maine on September 23, 1817 to Alden and Persis (Howard) Packard.
She was a sixth generation descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of the Mayflower and the
Plymouth colony. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary under Mary Lyons until her junior
year when she left to teach at the Knoxville Female Seminary in Tennessee. After two years she moved
on to teach at Maryville where she attended a Baptist convention and met Lewis Towers. The happy
couple returned to DeKalb Co. where they taught at the Eusebia Academy and started their family.
In 1842 Eusebia Academy also became Indian Creek Baptist Church. In September 1842, at the
request of the Indian Creek Baptist Church, Lewis was examined and ordained to perform all the
duties required of the Ministers of the order.
In December of 1853 ill health forced him to leave Georgia for Milltown, Chambers Co., Alabama
where he took charge of the Milltown Male and Female Academy. He also became the pastor of the
Shiloh Baptist Church (later renamed Milltown Baptist Church) in Milltown. Unfortunately he contracted
typhoid fever and died 16 June 1855. Lewis was buried in Alabama.
Five children blessed their union. William Alden was born 14 October 1842, Ellen Eliza was born 30
December 1844, Anna Pathenia was born 9 August 1847, John Royal was born 25 August 1850, and
Louisa Lewis was born in Alabama on 23 August 1855 two months after her father’s death.
In 1857 Louisa married John Gideon Leverett, another minister. John, a widower with five children of
his own operated a gristmill in Chambers County. Louisa died 4 February 1884 in Georgia. At that
time Lewis’ eldest son returned to Alabama where he exhumed his father’s body and reburied it next to
his wife in the Decatur Cemetery in Decatur, DeKalb Co., Georgia.
