[4] Lewis was born in the small farming settlement of Freetown (near Lahore) in Orange County, Virginia,[5] the granddaughter of an emancipated slave who helped start the community.

[7] At some point, between D.C. and New York City, Edna Lewis married Steven Kingston, a retired Merchant Marine cook and a Communist.

[2] After five years there, Lewis left Café Nicholson and from there she spent time as a pheasant farmer in New Jersey until the entire flock died one evening from an unidentified disease.

She opened and closed her own restaurant, catered for friends and acquaintances, taught cooking lessons, and even became a docent in the Hall of African Peoples in the American Museum of Natural History.

[1] The Taste of Country Cooking contained as many recipes as it did information about Southern and African-American food – successfully capturing the spirit and stories Lewis had to share – which was Jones' intention with the book.

[4] In 1986 Lewis adopted a young adult, Dr. Afeworki Paulos (a lecturer at the University of Michigan), after he arrived from Eritrea to study in the United States.

[4] The two formed a deep friendship, with Lewis moving to Atlanta to be near Peacock in 1992,[11] and they eventually collaborated on the book The Gift of Southern Cooking (2003).