[1] Before Lewis was born, his mother and father escaped from slavery in Virginia and fled to Chelsea on October 4, 1842.

George's trial received great notoriety; he was represented by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.

[clarification needed] Lewis's father, George Latimer, had no proof of his emancipation and likely fled to protect his family.

[5] Lewis Howard Latimer joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 16 on September 16, 1864, and served as a Landsman on the USS Massasoit.

After receiving an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy on July 3, 1865, he gained employment as an office boy with a patent law firm, Crosby Halstead and Gould, with a $3.00 per week salary.

Later, after his boss recognized his talent for sketching patent drawings, Latimer was promoted to the position of head draftsman earning $20.00 a week by 1872 ($438.59 today).

Other family members already living there were his brother, George A. Latimer, his wife, Jane, his sister, Margaret, and her husband, Augustus T. Hawley, and their children.

[9] In 1879, he moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was hired as assistant manager and draftsman for the US Electric Lighting Co., a company owned by Hiram Maxim, a rival of Thomas Edison.

In 1895 Lewis wrote a statement in connection with the National Conference of Colored Men about equality, security, and opportunity.

[4] For 25 years, from 1903 until he died in 1928, Latimer lived with his family in a home on Holly Avenue in what is known now as the East Flushing section of Queens, New York.

[24] Approximately sixty years after his death, his home was moved from Holly Avenue to 137th Street in Flushing, Queens, which is about 1.4 miles northwest of its original location.