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History of Jeremiah in the Revolutionary War

Seth Lewis

Seth Lewis  was a descendant of a London merchant who took refuge from religious persecution in Connecticut.  Daniel, father of Seth, was a farmer in Massachusetts.  Seth was born October 14, 1764.  In 1774 the parents, having suffered financial misfortune, migrated to West Florida, taking with them their three sons and four of their daughters.  The youngest of these, Sarah, at a later date married Maj. Isaac Guion, and was mother of one of Mississippi's governors.  The Lewis family reached New Orleans by sea early in 1775, and taking a boat up the river began a settlement on the banks of the Big Black, in the wilderness.  Their privations were severe; the father died of fever in June and the mother in September.  The children found refuge with the neighbors, some miles distant, until the elder brother, Daniel, gathered them together.

In 1777 they moved to Natchez, where Daniel went into business.  In 1780, one of the brothers, Asahel, joined Willing's command, (q.v.) and was taken prisoner at Manchac by the British loyalists and carried to Pensacola.  The Tory sentiment being strong at Natchez, Daniel, with the remainder of the family, moved to Plaquemine, LA., and soon afterward he was drowned while going to New Orleans.  Seth found it necessary to bind himself out as an apprentice with a tanner and shoemaker on the coast.  While in this situation he learned French from his associates.  This and some instruction in childhood, was all his schooling. But he had access to books, which he studied in leisure moments.  At 21 years of age he and his sisters went to live at New Orleans, and he became clerk to a trader, who sent him to Opelousas, where he gained the friendship of an old French merchant, Duvolde, who took him in as a partner, admitted him to his family, and gave him a place of honor in the community.  When Duvolde retired from business, Lewis engaged in various occupations until at Natchez, in 1790, he undertook the sale of a flatboat load of goods at Nashville, Tenn. From Genevieve.  At Nashville, he formed the acquaintance of Josiah Love, and began the study of law.  He was married in 1793 to a daughter of Col. Thomas Hardeman.

In 1795 he began the practice, was immediately successful, and was elected to the first State legislature. While preparing to return to Mississippi, for the sake of his health, the office of chief justice of the Territory became vacant, and he secured the appointment from President Adams, May 13, 1800.  Here he found an unpleasant situation.  The wealthy and aristocratic men of the district, having adopted theoretically the politics of Mr. Jefferson, professed to be incensed at the appointment, by a Federalist president, of "a poor, ignorant shoemaker," as chief justice.  On coming into the office, he drew up a law regulating the practice of the courts, adapted from the laws of Tennessee, as required by the United States laws, and united with the governor and Judge Bruin in passing the act.  His persecutors proposed to have him impeached for this.  He also excited enmity by his independence as a judge. When the Jefferson party came into control in 1802, the Territorial legislature presented articles of impeachment and summoned him to appear before that body.  In reply, he declared his innocence of all charges of misconduct, and said he was answerable to the congress of the United States, before which he was ready to appear.  This ended the legislative proceeding.  After congress had adjourned without action, Judge Lewis resigned his office, 1803.  It had brought him the salary of $800 a year.

In the course of his duties he visited the Tombigbee settlement at stated periods, to hold court, riding through the Choctaw country and fording the rivers.  In 1803 he presented a petition to the general assembly praying that he be reimbursed for a horse stolen in the Indian country as he was returning from holding court in Washington district.  At the next election, his enemies were generally defeated by the people, and Col. Anthony Hutchins, the great leader of the anti-administration party, in his last illness called him in to take charge of an important matter of litigation.  He was also employed by two of the sons in law of Hutchins, Col. F. L. Claiborne and William Brooks, as counsel in the struggle over division of the property which followed the death of Hutchins, and Lewis arranged for George Poindexter, attorney of the other heirs, an amicable arrangement.  In April 1807, he was appointed attorney general for the counties of the Natchez district, an office he resigned in 1808.  In 1810, he removed to Opelousas, Gov. Claiborne of Louisiana, offered him the place of parish judge of Attakapas.  Under the State government, 1812, he was made district judge.  During the time of the codification mania in 1820-25 he attacked the penal code proposed by Edward Livingston and caused its rejection.  This triumph, however, caused a renewal of the cry of "shoemaker," that embittered his life, for it actually estranged many from him.  After 27 years as parish and district judge, he died Nov. 15, 1848.  (Autobiography, Miss. Archives.)  Judge Lewis was the first master of a lodge of Masons in Mississippi.
Source: Encyclopedia of Mississippi History; Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persona; Planned and Edited by Dunbar Rowland, LL.D. Director Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Member American Historical Associations, Vol. II.L-Z 1907