Mr. _____________Lewis was a resident of Georgia, presumably the northern part. Nothing is known of his ancestors except that they were of Welsh descent. He had three sons and two daughters by a former marriage. The boys, Thomas, Richard and _________ left home early on account of a stepmother. Mr. ______________Rogers was a resident of Georgia, presumably Jefferson County. Nothing is known of his ancestors except that they were perhaps of Scotch descent. He had several children, Elizabeth being the oldest. She remembered the Revolutionary War, though her father took no part in it, as he was a Seven Day Baptist and opposed to taking up arms. She remembered going to Kentucky with her father. There being a great company, the women and children rode on horses, and they alos had pack horses to convey their necessary outfits while the men marched at their sides with guns to protect them from the Indians. Somewhere in the early 1790s, Richard Lewis and Elizabeth Rogers were married. She was his senior, he being only twenty years of age. One of his sisters married a Mr. Gross and from this union sprang the Gross Family of Macon, Ga. One of his brothers married and settled probably in Houston County, Georgia and raised a family there, while the whereabouts of the other one was not known. Mr. Rogers' brothers and sisters moved to Macon County, Alabama. Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Wilkinson County, Georgia, together with a family by the name of Jones and were the only white families for some distance. Mrs. Lewis was very much dissatisfied with this move and when he had occasion to return to the settlements he gave her a sign. He was on horseback and when she saw him coming with an axe on his shoulder she might know they would stay there, otherwise they would return to the settlements, and so when she saw him coming with the axe she was very much disappointed. A few years after they made them a home in about a mile of where the Southern Railroad runs and halfway between Gordon and McIntire, No.'s 16 and 17 on the road. The Indians around them were peaceable, but very troublesome on account of their pilfering propensity and so when Mr. Lewis and Mr. Jones killed their first hogs they built their smokehouse of pine boards of which material their dwellings were constructed and they had to take turns in sitting up to watch their meat. One day Mrs. Lewis was sewing out in the shade and an Indian came up and, putting his hand on her work, asked her what she was making. She was unhappy and discontented, so she jerked her work away and harshly bade him go away and leave her work alone. He drew back his arm as if to strike and she saw a knife gleaming under his waist, but he only turned away scowling and soon after regained his good humor. When her eldest son was three or four years old he wandered off and a party of Indians brought him back with a bunch of berries. She thought they were poison but the Indians informed her in their broken accents that they were not, pointing to their children who were eating them, to signify that they were all right. Their house, which was probably built about 1800 is standing now. It was built of hewn pine logs and weatherboarded. It was two rooms with sheds on both sides and a hall running the entire length. It was built in 100 days, for which the builder received $100. James Rogers was the second son of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. He was born in 1806. They lived in the old homestead until after all the children were about grown. Then they removed to a place where Gordon is now. He had gotten a tolerable education by walking six miles to school in Irwinton, the County Seat., where the Militia met to drill, and had taught school near there. He kept a store at a place known as the Cross Roads and here the precinct ballet was held and the Militia met to drill. Much whiskey was sold and drunk here and it is certain that the sale of this whiskey was the greatest, if not the only fault that J. R. Lewis had, for he was a man of honest convictions and unbounded integrity. His father, Richard Lewis, died very suddenly-ate dinner and fell dead a few minutes after, probably from heart failure. Joel Rivers was a native of North Carolina, but on account of trouble with his stepmother he came to Georgia and settled near where the crossroads afterwards was and about three miles of where Gordon now stands. He was only about 18 years old, but he bought a farm and his sister, Mrs. Hughs, who was afterwards so well known in Cuthbert, Georgia as the maker of fine ladie's shoes, kept house for him. Probably about 1820 Jonathan Pearson was married to Sarah Shepherd. They were very poor, but young and energetic, and in a few years they had made them a nice home and soon began to accumulate property. Several children were born to them and one of their boys went with a crowd of volunteers to Texas to help with the trouble then transpiring there. It is not known what service he rendered nor where he died, but he met death in some way and when the Militia formed and went to meet them on their return they were met with the sad intelligence of his death. Mr. Pearson lived about six miles from Irwinton and about eighteen or twenty miles from Gordon. The country was sparsely inhabited and so churches were only here and there. Old Friendship, a Primitive Baptist Church, was about ten miles from his home and they, being of that faith, attended church there. It was probably at this church that Joel Rivers met Mary Pearson, who became his wife. On the old homestead he spent his eventful life. He was elected one term to the legislature and was for many years Justice of the Peace. He was of industrious habits and fully alive to all the social and political events transpiring in the South, and when at last the tocsin of war sounded, two of his sons enlisted in the Confederacy and fought in the cause that was lost. One of them was promoted to Colonel and was wounded, losing a foot. The oldest son was left behind and when Sherman was marching through Georgia some of the Yankees came up with him, where he was hiding out. They began to question him but he would pretend not to hear, indeed to be perfectly ignorant as well as deaf, and so in disgust they left him. Mr. Rivers raised an industrious family of children and lived a respected citizen. In his later life he was afflicted with palsy, which at last prostrated him, and when his wife died, he was carried and seated by her bedside where her hand was held in his, though drawn and helpless, until her spirit was wafted home, and then he was carried back to his bed where he lay trembling violently for a good while. He was a very large portly man of Scotch Irish; good natured; almost jelly; and even after he was afflicted many anecdotes he would relate. A negro boy did nothing but attend him, and as a fruit of an honest life he had all the comforts his heart could desire. When his children would be there every eye would be turned to him, and his face would light up and he would begin to shake, indicating that he wished to speak, and then a pin might have been heard falling to the floor, so profound would be the silence. He had a large invalid chair in which he could be rolled to the fire in winter or on the broad piazza in summer or in the dining room at mealtime, for he lived many years being fed by others, and at last succumbed to the dreadful disease and died at a ripe old age, leaving behind the legacy of a long and useful life. He raised a large and industrious family of children and J. R. Lewis married Sarah, the oldest one, at the age of about thirty, she being 13. They lived at the Cross Roads for awhile when he gave himself up to farming finally, at the age of about forty, he sold his farm and removed to the old Lewis Homestead where he lived the remainder of his life. He was a little below medium height, not very jolly, but bright and intelligent. A good citizen, a good husband, and an indulgent father, yet he did not accumulate property as his father and father-in-law had. The negroes inherited were about all he ever owned. What his views were in slavery as an institution is not known, but he certainly believed in the right of each State to regulate her own affairs and was a uncle[?]-souled secessionist and died before the war ended. Two of his sons were in the Southern Army. One of them was wounded at Gettysburg, but lived to feel the effects of the lost cause and the dreadful re-construction era. The negroes were freed and this event awoke the malice of the whites, strengthened by the bigotry of the blacks and a series of Ku Klux Klan raiding began, which was as unholy as the four years of war had been. If every slave owner had been as good to their slaves as Mrs. Elizabeth Lewis and also as Joel Rivers and J. R. Lewis, then slavery might have existed until now. Harriet Beecher Stowe would have had nothing to build up "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with and the northern crusaders would have had time to investigate their own system of slavery which would have been the more cruel of the two. It was the abuse of slavery that brought on the unholy conditions which resulted in the unholy war. Mrs. Lewis or "Granma Lewis" as she was called, was intelligent to a fault with her negroes, not allowing them to be whipped at all, which gave rise to many funny happenings.

1850 Wilkenson County GA Census:
20 782 782 Lewis James R. 46 M Farmer 3,500 Ga
21 782 782 Lewis Sarah A. 28 F Ga
22 782 782 Lewis Richard Joel 8 M Ga X
23 782 782 Lewis Sattsy Ann 6 F Ga X
24 782 782 Lewis Mary L. 4 F Ga
25 782 782 Lewis William 2 M Ga

Father: James Richard LEWIS  b: ABT. 1780 in North Carolina
Mother: Elizabeth Ann RODGERS  b: ABT. 1775
Marriage 1 Sarah Ann RIVERS  b: 1822 in Georgia
Married: 1 SEP 1836
Children
Satsie Anne Elizabeth LEWIS  b: 26 MAY 1844 in Wilkenson County, Georgia
Benjamin C. LEWIS  b: 1843 in Wilkenson Co, Ga
Mary (Poly) Lucretia LEWIS  b: 1846 in Wilkinson Co, Ga
Ellen Francis LEWIS
Ephraim LEWIS
William Green LEWIS  b: 31 MAY 1848 in Wilkinson Co, Ga
Richard Joel LEWIS b: 31 AUG 1841 in Wilkinson Co, Ga
Mary Lucretia LEWIS b: 1846
Sara Jane LEWIS
Thomas Jasper LEWIS  b: 1850
 
 

submitted by Constance J. Barnum
Agee Ancestors

Constance J. Barnun copyright 2004