Francis Lewis was born on March 21, 1713, in Llandaff, Wales, the son of Morgan Lewis and Anne Pettingale Lewis. His family had connections to Newport in south Wales, but both parents died while Francis was still young. Orphanhood made relatives important in directing his upbringing and education. He was raised for a time under the care of a maternal aunt and uncle, circumstances that separated his earliest years from the stable parental household experienced by many of his later political associates. Lewis received an education that was unusually cosmopolitan for a future American merchant. He attended Westminster School in London, one of England’s leading schools, where instruction centered on Latin, classical literature, rhetoric, discipline, and preparation for professional or commercial life. Accounts also associate part of his upbringing with Scotland, although the exact sequence of his schooling is not always presented consistently. What is clear is that he grew up with experience of more than one part of Britain and acquired the literacy and social confidence necessary to operate in international trade. After completing his schooling, Lewis entered a London mercantile house. This was the practical apprenticeship that shaped his early adulthood. He learned bookkeeping, credit, purchasing, shipping, and the personal relationships upon which eighteenth-century commerce depended. When he reached twenty-one, he inherited property left by his father. Rather than settle into the life of a Welsh landholder, he sold the inheritance and invested the proceeds in merchandise. Around 1737 Lewis crossed the Atlantic to New York. He left part of his cargo with his business associate Edward Annesley for sale and carried the remainder to Philadelphia, where he spent about two years before returning to New York.