Author: Robert L. Knott, Jr.
Colonel Nicholas Lewis was born in "Belvoir" Louisa Co., Virginia on January 19, 1734. He was the second son of Col. Robert Lewis of Belvior and Jane Meriwether. Nicholas was an Albemarle County landowner and friend of Thomas Jefferson.

He was also an officer in the American Revolution, a County magistrate, Surveyor, and Sheriff. In 1735, Nicholas Meriwether, Nicholas’ grandfather, obtained patents from King George III to approximately 19,000 acres in Albemarle County east of Charlottesville. One parcel of 1020 acres was located west of the Rivanna River, the area which now is the Locust Grove and Belmont neighborhoods. It became known as “The Farm” because it was the one cleared area in a virgin forest. Nicholas Lewis inherited the property in 1762 and built another main house facing the river around 1770. It was described as a place of beauty surrounded by a garden of roses, shrubs and fine fruit. A building on the property likely served as headquarters for British Col. Banastre Tarleton briefly in June 1781. Maj. Gen. George A. Custer would later occupy the house as his headquarters for a brief time in March 1865. All that remains of "The Farm" is the kitchen or cook’s house. It is still surrounded by mature hardwood trees and retains its view of Monticello.

Nicholas Lewis married Mary (Capt. Molly) Walker in 1758. Mary was the daughter of Dr. Thomas Walker and Mildred Thornton Meriwether of Castle Hill where Mary was born in 1742. Dr. Walker – the subject of the next patriot profile. Nicholas and Mary had 15 children. July, 1775, saw the Governor of Virginia a fugitive and the members of the Assembly met as a Provincial Convention to raise and embody an armed force to defend the Province.

The flight of the Governor left the Colony without an executive head and the Convention therefore appointed, on the sixteenth of August, a Committee of Safety of eleven members to continue until its next session. It was to carry into execution all ordinances and resolutions of the Convention, to grant commissions to all provincial military officers, to appoint commissaries, paymasters and contractors and to provide for the troops. It was to issue warrants on the Treasurer to supply these agents with money and pay them for their services and to settle such incidental expenses as arose in connection with the military establishment. All public war stores were to be in its charge. The Committee, moreover, was made Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the Province, and every officer, to the highest, was obliged to swear obedience to it. If sufficient danger threatened the Colony before the troops which the Convention had determined upon could be raised and organized, the Committee might call upon the volunteer companies which had already sprung up through the Colony, to take the field. Col. Nicholas Lewis was a Member of the Committee of Safety and Convention of 1775.

Little is known of Nicholas’ military career other than a brief note by Thomas Jefferson dated August 18, 1813:
"Nicholas Lewis, the second of his father's brothers, commanded a regiment of militia in the successful expedition of 1776 against the Cherokee Indians; who, seduced by the agents of the British government to take up the hatchet against us, had committed great havoc on our southern frontier, by murdering and scalping helpless women and children, according to their cruel and cowardly principles of warfare. The chastisement they then received closed the history of their wars, and prepared them for receiving the elements of civilization, which, zealously inculcated by the present government of the United States, have rendered them an industrious, peaceable, and happy people.

This member of the family of Lewises, whose bravery was so successfully proved on this occasion, was endeared to all who knew him by his inflexible probity, courteous disposition, benevolent heart, and engaging modesty and manners. He was the umpire of all the private differences of his country-selected always by both parties. He was also the guardian of Meriwether Lewis, .who had lost his father at an early age."

Col. Nicholas Lewis died December 8, 1808 at 74 years of age. He is buried on his property in a cemetery on a hilltop overlooking the river. Mary died February 9, 1824 at 81 years of age.