The Welsh Lineage of John Lewis (1592-1657), Emigrant to Gloucester, Virginia

Book excerpt: The Lewis Family of Warner Hall was perhaps the most influential family in Gloucester County, Virginia, during the colonial period. The subject of a widely respected family history by Merrow Edgerton Sorley, originally published in 1935 and reprinted by the Genealogical Publishing Co., the Lewises of Warner Hall and their descendants have made notable contributions to Virginia and the nation. Since the original publication of Sorley's Lewis of Warner Hall, a debate has raged over the identity of the family's immigrant ancestor, whom Sorley presumed to be one ROBERT LEWIS of Wales. It was left to Mrs. Moses to show conclusively that Sorley was wrong and that the true immigrant ancestor of the Lewises of Warner Hall was JOHN LEWIS, who settled at Totopotomoys Creek in Gloucester County, Virginia on July l, 1653. In her vitally important little book The Welsh Lineage of John Lewis (1592-1657), originally published in 1984, Mrs. Moses traces back the Welsh side of the Lewis family for three generations in the vicinity of its ancestral home in Llangatock, Breconshire, and also resolves a number of issues surrounding the authenticity of the family coat-of-arms.