In 1790, Captain Lewis donated 100 acres of land to the Bethel Academy for Bishop Asbury to form a Methodist Episcopal School.
They had twelve children, 10 of whom lived past the age of 3: Sidonia Pierce (1798), John Lawson (1800), Louisa Marie (1801), Theodore (1803), Eliza (1804), Alfred Jefferson (1808), Twins Hampden and Sidney (1810), George Washington (1814), and Benjamin Franklin (1818).
Lewis graduated from Washington and Lee University, having studied law, and settled his family in Jessamine County, Kentucky, near Lexington, in 1798.
He served under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812, participating as the captain of an organized military company in the night attack on the British of December 23, 1814, during the Battle of New Orleans.
Upon his death, the members of the bar desired to erect a monument to his memory, but his children declined the honor, because their father had requested that he should rest in the same spot with his wife.