Fielding Lewis
(1725-1781)
BIRTH
July 7, 1725
PLACE
Gloucester County, Virginia
DEATH
December 7, 1781
PLACE
Fredericksburg, Virginia
FAMILY
BROTHER
Augustine Washington Sr.
(1694-1743)
SISTER
Mary Ball Washington
(1709-1789)
SISTER
Betty Washington Lewis
(1733-1797)
BROTHER
George Washington Lewis
(1757-1821)
BROTHER
Lawrence Lewis
(1767-1839)
BROTHER
Robert Lewis
(1769-1829)
BROTHER
Howell Lewis
(1771-1822)
SISTER
Frances Parke Lewis Butler
(1799-1875)
BROTHER
Lorenzo Lewis
(1803-1847)
WIFE
Betty Washington Lewis
(1733-1797)
CHILDREN
George Washington Lewis
(1757-1821)
CHILDREN
Lawrence Lewis
(1767-1839)
CHILDREN
Robert Lewis
(1769-1829)
CHILDREN
Howell Lewis
(1771-1822)
HOMES
Kenmore
VA - Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
NOT YET RESEARCHED
NOT YET RESEARCHED
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
Fielding Lewis (1725–1781/82) was a Fredericksburg merchant, Virginia burgess and husband of Betty Washington, George Washington’s sister. He built the future Kenmore mansion and held plantations worked by enslaved people. During the Revolution he and Charles Dick established the Fredericksburg Gun Manufactory, supplying arms while spending his own fortune. The state never repaid him. His will was proved in January 1782; his precise death date remains disputed.
EARLY LIFE
Fielding Lewis was born on Jul 7, 1725 in Gloucester County, Virginia. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
Warner Hall Marker
4645 George Washington Memorial Hwy, Gloucester, VA 23061
NA-4 commemorates Warner Hall three miles east of the sign. DHR identifies surviving eighteenth-century brick dependencies and a stable, but dates the standing mansion to about 1905 after loss of the colonial house. The marker's claim of a restored 1740 house is misleading. Current panel care and the location record need confirmation.
MARKER
The available biographical record identifies Fielding Lewis with work or public activity as a merchant, planter, soldier. Those roles provide the clearest documented basis for including this person in the database and should be read in the political, military, professional, or household context of the period. Fielding Lewis died on Dec 7, 1781 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Additional claims about employment, public service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted source did not support them.
CAREER
DEATH
Fielding Lewis was a Fredericksburg merchant, Virginia burgess and husband of Betty Washington, George Washington’s sister. During the Revolution he and Charles Dick established the Fredericksburg Gun Manufactory, supplying arms while spending his own fortune. The available biographical record identifies Fielding Lewis with work or public activity as a merchant, planter, soldier. Additional claims about employment, public service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted source did not support them. Lewis died in Fredericksburg in 1781 at the end of the Revolutionary War. Before her death in 1789, Mary Washington asked to be buried at her favorite spot at Kenmore, and her daughter Betty arranged for that. Betty outlived Lewis by 16 years, dying in 1797. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
St George's Episcopal Church
905 Princess Anne St, Fredericksburg, VA 22401
GRAVE
MUSEUM
Williamsburg Capitol
E Duke of Gloucester St, Williamsburg, VA 23185
MUSEUM
Kenmore
1201 Washington Ave, Fredericksburg, VA
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
Fielding Lewis (1725–1781), the Fredericksburg merchant and husband of Betty Washington Lewis. The Washington biographies are related family reading. Five dedicated biographies were not identified. These editorial selections include biographies where available, with personal writings, biographical reference and related studies clearly labelled.
1. Fielding Lewis and the Washington Family: A Chronicle of 18th Century Fredericksburg — Paula S. Felder. [Family biography] Find on Amazon
2. Genealogy of the Lewis Family in America, from the Middle of the Seventeenth Century Down to the Present Time — William Terrell Lewis. [Family biographical reference] Find on Amazon
3. Martha Washington: An American Life — Patricia Brady. [Related biography of his sister-in-law] Find on Amazon
4. Washington: A Life — Ron Chernow. [Related biography of his brother-in-law] Find on Amazon
5. Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, Volume II — Lyon Gardiner Tyler (editor). [Biographical reference] Find on Amazon
100544