N. H. Lewis, farmer, P. O. Napton. The subject of this sketch was born in Albemarle county, Virginia, in 1827, moved to Missouri, with his father’s family, in 1834, and was reared in Cooper county. In 1846 he enlisted in the 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteers, and under Col. Doniphan, accompanied the regiment to Chihuahua, and was engaged in the battles of Bracito and Sacramento, and assisted in taking the first piece of artillery captured at the Bracito. In the spring of 1849, Mr. Lewis went to California across the Plains, taking three months to make the trip. He mined for two years, and then returned home, and concluded to settle down. In the spring of 1852, he was married to Miss Lucy Thompson, of Cooper county, and lived in Cooper until the spring of 1860, when he moved to Saline. They have had four children, two of whom are living. When the war broke out Mr. Lewis was a constitutional Union man, and refused a colonel’s commission under Gen. Parsons, with whom he had formerly served in the Mexican war. The pressure of events was too much for him, however, and he started south with Robertson ‘s regiment of recruits, and was captured at Blackwater, imprisoned at St. Louis, and then at Alton, where the provost marshal took the oath for him (?) and he came home. Mr. Lewis is a member of the Baptist Church, of Arrow Rock and is a member of the Grange.
