Maj. Thomas W. Lewis, one of the most extensive farmers of Stewart County, is one of the eight children born to the marriage of Thomas W. and Sophronia (Nolen) Lewis. The father was a native of this county and his wife of Montgomery, where they were united in the sacred bonds of matrimony. Soon after their marriage they settled on their farm opposite Cumberland City, the father becoming one of the largest farmers of his community. Both parents were zealous workers in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which the father was a class-leader for some fifteen years. In the full bloom of manhood he was cut down by the reaper death, being only thirty-seven. After his death the mother remained in mournful widowhood till sixty-three yearws of age, when she too crossed the dark river. Grandfather Lewis settled in this county about 1800, and when the stirring events of the war of 1812 came on he went to New Orleans as a lieutenant, and in the heat of battle sprang upon the breastworks, waved his hat, blew his horn and hallooed to the Tennessee boys to give it to them. For his courageous conduct Jackson promoted him to the captaincy of a company. The Major's ancestors on both sides were of English and Irish descent. Of such ancestry born, in 1840, the subject of this sketch. He grew up on the farm and received an academic education. At the age of twenty he volunteered to serve his country as a private in Company B, of the Fourteenth Tennessee Infantry, C. S. A. After three months he was promoted to second lieutenant. In July, 1862, he resigned his position on account of failing health. Not content to remain at home he raised a company of cavalry, and as their captain led them to the front, and his company became Company C, Second Kentucky Cavalry, under Gen. Forrest. When he started there were sixty-five men in his company, and at the end of the year forty-three were killed or disabled. In 1863 he was commissioned major of his regiment, and held that position till the surrender at Washington, Ga. During the war he got in many close places but was never disabled. Having returned he was married in 1865 to Alice Thomas. The fruits of this union are two children, only one of whom is now living. His first wife having died he wedded, in 1874, Mrs. Eliza W. (Dickson) West, by whom he had seven children, four of whom are livng. He and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1884 when the people of Stewart County were casting about for a man of ability to represent them in the lower house of the State Legislature none was found more fitting for that honor than Maj. Lewis who still holds that position. Mr. Lewis owns some 1500 acres of good land, and an interest in a store at Sailor's Rest, nearly all of which has been accumulated since the war. He, like his father, in politics is a thorough-going Democrat.
http://www.tngenweb.org/stewart/index.htm