Francis Lewis

Francis Lewis was born in 1713 in Llandaff, Wales, and came to New York as a young merchant. He built a successful business, served as a British army supply agent in the French and Indian War, and later settled his family at Whitestone, on Long Island. He represented New York in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1776 British troops destroyed the Whitestone house and took his wife, Elizabeth Annesley Lewis, prisoner. She was later exchanged, but her health was broken, and she died in 1779. Lewis continued in Congress during the war, including work on the Board of Admiralty, and then retired from public life. He died in New York in 1802, having lived long enough to see the country he had helped to found securely independent.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · William Floyd · Philip Livingston · Lewis Morris