Lewis
It is very possible that the Lewis
line of ancestors can be traced back farther than any other name in
America. Many names are old, but the Lewis line of
descent is ancient. It dates back to Roman times and perhaps through the royal house
of the Welsh to hundreds of years before Christ.
Two thousand five hundred years before Christ, huge migrations of
mankind were on the move throughout the ancient world. They pushed out of the
Danube basin and out of Central Asia down into the settled and farming
civilizations of the Mediterranean and Middle East. Men had begun to use
bronze for the first time in history, and with the use of metal the first
barbarian empires were born.
Troy fell about the year 1183 BC, and within a generation the
civilization of archaic Greece was destroyed by a new race of invaders from
north of the Black Sea. The Mycenaen and Minoan cultures almost disappeared.
Even Egypt was invaded and ruled by the foreigners. That period of
history is so far back in time that it is just barely mentioned in the
second book of the Bible.
The barbarians pushed into Europe. And there, in about the year 1000 BC,
they first learned to use iron. Some even passed off the continent in
small boats made of hides and conquered prehistoric Britain. A branch of
these barbarians called the Brythonic and Goidelian Celts were the ancestors
of the Lewis families today. They settled in the mountains
of Wales, the barbarians farthest westward, the most adventurous, the most
free. And for a thousand years they answered to no man except their own kings.
Then shortly before the birth of Christ, Julius Caesar invaded Britain.
He did not remain long and was not too successful, but other Romans
followed in the succeeding generations. Then one hundred years after the
first Roman landing a first real historical individual, distantly related to
the Lewis descendants today, came forward into the lends
of history. His name was Cymbeline. The Romans called him Cunobelinus.
William Shakespeare wrote a play about him four hundred years ago.
Cymbeline was an ancient king of Wales and a famous Welsh hero. He was
the husband of Cartismanda, the Queen of the Brignates. Though unconquered
in his high Welsh mountains, he nevertheless was a prudent ruler and allied
himself with the Romans. Rome was in the process of conquering Britain dur
ing the reign of Augustus Caesar. They held much of southern and eastern
England facing their continental province of Gaul.
Rome ruled their British province through a tyrant governor named Publius
Ostorius Scapula. He was a vicious man and a thorough general against any
barbarian tribe who did not send tribute to Rome. First he crushed the
Iceni and then the Decangi and finally he struck at the Brigantes, the
people of Cymbeline's wife.
Cymbeline ruled a barbarian people called the Silures. The Romans
established a brigade garrison at their fortified camp called Camulodunum
(Camelot) and prepared to invade the land of the Welsh. But Cymbeline was
an old man and much loved by his people who nicknamed him Bran the Blessed.
So the old man left the success of the coming war to his three sons. One
of these sons the Romans called Caractacus. The Welsh called him Caradwg.
He was married to an incredibly beautiful woman named Tegas Euvren which
means "Golden Beauty." This young Caractacus led the forces of free Wales
to resist the Imperialism of Roman aggression.
His army fought for nine long years before the Roman legions, like a
great machine ground the Welsh down to defeat and took the young lord and
his family to Rome in chains. There the brave captive and his beautiful
wife were displayed in the Roman arena before the mob and the emperor
Claudius and his second wife, the evil fat harridan Agrippina, the mother of
the maniac Nero. Tacitus, the famous Roman historian records that event
saying:
There were no downcast looks or appeals for mercy from Caractacus. He
stood before the emperor's dais and spoke in these terms. "Had my lineage
and rank been accompanied by only moderate success, I should have dome to
this city as friend rather than prisoner, and you would not have disdained
to ally yourself peacefully with one so nobly born, the ruler of so many
nations. As it is, humiliation is my lot, glory yours. I had horses, men,
arms, wealth. Are you surprised I am sorry to lose them? If you want to
rule the world, does it follow that everyone else welcomes enslavement? If
I had surrendered without a blow before being brought before you, neither
my downfall nor your triumph would have become famous. If you execute me,
they will be forgotten. Spare me, and I shall be an everlasting token of
your mercy."
The Emperor was so amazed at the courage and eloquence of the young enemy
that he pardoned him and released him from his chains. He also freed his
wife and brothers as well. Caractacus was kept at Rome for seven years.
During those years the Romans still were trying to hold down the Welsh who
simply would not live as Roman slaves. In the course of just a few years
the Welsh destroyed the forces of four Roman governors by using the methods
of guerrilla warfare. Wales never was completely subdued. even today,
though a part of England, the Welsh still speak their own language and have
preserved their independence, character, and culture longer than any other
nation in recorded history.
Caractacus as a Roman hostage eventually returned to Wales. While in
Rome he learned of Christianity, possibly from St. Peter or St. Paul who
preached and were martyred there during the time of Nero. Caractacus' name,
indeed, is from the root Charis which means grace or from the Latin Carus
which means beloved. He and his family may very well have been among the
earliest Christians in all of Britain. But the Welsh people were pagan
worshipping in the faith of the Druids, whose religious practices dated back
to the prehistoric Aryan migrations that also gave birth to the Hindu faith
in India. England and Wales themselves did not become Christian until some
hundreds of years after the death of Caractacus.
A child of Tegas, the Golden Beauty, wife of Caractacus, was Teon,
princess of Britain. Teon's son was Gwathford, a great lord in Wales during
the time of Roman domination in Britain. For the next fifteen generations
his descendants watched the Roman might slowly crumble. Rome was sacked in
AD 410 by the Vandals and sacked again and burned in 476. These disasters
forced the last Roman legions to retreat from Britain. Once more the Welsh
were free men.
All the Lewises of Wales are descendants of Gwathford.
When Rome fell Gwathford's descendant of the fifteenth generation was named
Richard Guynn. Richard had a son named Lewis and this
Lewis founded the family name through his several sons.
Richard Guynn returned to the school of language at Landwit in Glamorgan,
Wales, from his studies in Rome. He became the first bishop of Caerlow in
Gloucester, the royal castle, and afterwards bishop of Llanded where he was
driven by the Saxon invasion. For when Rome retreated from Britain, the
Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Picts, and Scots, barbarian tribes, invaded the
undefended island from their cold homes in Scandinavia.
One of the last kings of civilized Britain was a man named Artorius
Pendragon. The educated Latin-speaking population called him Ambrosius
Aurealinus. The Welsh called him Uther of the White Dragon. He was King of
Mercia in central England and legend calls him King Arthur of the Round
Table. In reality he was a chieftain, a kind, one of the last civilized
rulers England had before the Saxon invasions crushed the light of Europe
out and began the Dark Ages. Arthur's wife was a Welsh princess named
Guinnevere. One of her ladies-in-waiting was an ancestor of the
Lewis family. Sir Gawain, one of Arthur's knights, was
also Welsh. Arthur was born in Tintagel castle, which is situated on a
barren coast near Wales.
Lewis, the son of Gawain, was the father of
Lewis of Clifach Vargold; Lewis of Penmark; Lewis of Listolybout; Lewis of
Glyntaft; Lewis of Lanesher; Lewisof Newhouse; and the Lewis of Green Meadow.
King Arthur's coat of arms was a white dragon on a golden field. The
dragon also is the ancestral beast of the house of Lewis.
Since these Lewises were men of power, their given name
alone carried such prestige that it almost amounted to a title in itself.
The land they ruled was called the Marches because it was the center for
centuries of war. The name of Lewis in time, came to be
synonymous to the Welsh for Guardian or Listener. The English and Saxon,
Lewis meant Fighter.
Though King Arthur won a great battle in 571 at Badon Hill, he was
finally defeated by treachery from his half-brother Modred in alliance with
the Saxons. The survivors of his defeat settled in Wales and made war on
the Saxons for two hundred years.
Though the Danes made inroads into Saxon England in the eighth century,
it was not until 1066 that the Normans, themselves descended from Rolf the
Viking, conquered England under their lord, William the Conqueror. He and
his descendants subdued England and established the Divit, at the time of
the Norman invasions. He was the ancestor of Llewellan, laird of St. Clair,
and of Frecia, the father of Philip Llewellan of Ivor. The name Llewellan
is the archaic Welsh form for Lewis.
When William, Earl of Gloucester, attempted once to deprive Philip
Lewis of Ivor of some of his stock animals Philip sent his retainers up the
walls of Cardiff castle in the face of 120 men at arms and kidnapped the
earl, his countess and son, and held them prisoner until they agreed to
return his animals to him. Philip Lewis was later killed in battle about
1157 during the reign of King Henry II.
Lewes was a Scandinavian word meaning sheltered meadow. The largest
island of the Outer Hebrides in the North Sea above Scotland, on the sea
route from Denmark to England, is named Lewes. It was the first sea shelter
for Vikings sailing to raid England. The Lewes today are Saxon branches of
the family who derive their name from their place of first residence in
sheltered meadows of their newly conquered homesites.
Other Lewises today are Jewish. They changed their name
from Levi and Levin to Lewis in relatively modern times.
As many as three percent of the Lewises have their name from
this borrowing. Of course the Jewish tribes of Levites is as old as, or
older than, the Welsh lines dating back into prehistory. Traditionally the
Levites were the priests of the Jewish faith. Finally, some
Lewises today are of French origin. When the French
Catholics persecuted their Protestant Huguenots and passed the Edict of
Nantes in 1685, some Louis of France fled to England and Ireland and changed
their name to the more common spelling of Lewis.
The Lewis name is most common in South Wales and across
the border into England proper into the county of Monmouth. The name
migrated south and east into England from Wales. The variant spelling of
Lewes in Norfolkshire traces the Saxon settlements. Monmouthshire has about
400 families named Lewis; southern Wales has 330.
Shropshire and Herefordshire just across the border have 268 between them.
North Wales has 150 and Wiltshire, the farthest east of the
Lewis migration, has a thin 80 families.
Some of the early written records of the Lewis name are
found in medieval tax and church records. They note Llewellan (Lewis)
ap (son of) Madoc the Rede (the learned), archdeacon of Brecon in 1437.
Lewis ap Owen, archdeacon of Cardigan is recorded in 1487. Early and
middle sixteenth century records give the names of Lewis ap Rhys, prebendary
of St. David in 1502 and William Lewis, archdeacon of
Caemarthan in 1554.
In 1790 the name Lewis was the twenty-first most common
name in America. Today it is the nineteenth most common. In 1964 the
United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Social Security
Administration did a study of the distribution of the surnames in the
Social Security account number file. The file contained 152,757,455
account numbers. Of these there were 1,091,522 different surnames.
The study revealed the Lewis family to have 457,900 members
old enough to have obtained a social security number by 1964.
Source: "Lewis Family History" by the American Genealogical Research Institute,
copyright 1978
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