Nevada Genealogy Trails Eureka County D. E. Lewis Biography

D. E. LEWIS, a successful and long established business man of Eureka, is one of the old settlers of Nevada, and made his acquaintance with it as a territory in 1854. when he passed through with an emigrant train to California. He has been engaged in various enterprises since coming to the west, and has met with more than his share of unavoidable reverses, but his energy and true western spirit of never-give-up have each time placed him on his feet again and made him more prosperous than before. During thirty years of residence in Eureka he has gained the respect and esteem of all with whom he has come in contact in business or personal relations, and he and his sons are classed with the solid and progressive citizenry of the town and county.

Mr. Lewis was born in Wales. April 28, 1837. and is a son of Edward and Mary (Thomas) Lewis, also natives of that country, and who emigrated to America in 1846, bringing with them their nine children. They settled in the state of Missouri, where they remained a few years, and in 1854 made the journey across the plains to California, six of their children accompanying them. They drove oxen, and were four and a half months on the way. They brought their live-stock with them, and when they arrived in Sacramento county they engaged in farming. Edward Lewis died in California in 1883 at the ripe age of eighty-six years, and his pioneer wife had passed away in 1863. But two of their children are now living.

Mr. Lewis was but a child when he was brought to this country, and was still a boy when the journey was made across the plains. The greater part of his education was received in California, and before he started out independently he helped his father with the farm work. He had a farm of his own in Sacramento county, but after the flood came in 1860 and drowned all his stock, he gave up that business and for a number of years was successfully engaged in teaming. There was all the work in this line that one could attend to in those days, and it paid well, although it was an outdoor life and exposed to hardships and many dangers. While thus engaged he freighted to Virginia City and Silver City, Nevada, and having thus made the acquaintance of the country, he came to the state in 1868 and made it his permanent headquarters while he continued teaming. He hauled ore from the Yellow Jacket mine, and followed this occupation for two years. He came to Eureka in 1870. and for the following three years was foreman of the furnaces. He began his livery business in 1889, and has continued in this with good success to the present time. In addition, he now deals in hay and grain, and his wide acquaintance in the state and his straightforward methods of doing business have brought him a good patronage. During his residence in California and Nevada he has had the almost unparalleled record of having been burned out fourteen times, each time without insurance, and he was nearly financially ruined every time. In 1874 the opposite demon of water visited him, and carried away his resilience, so that there seems to have been some malice in fate's constant attendance upon him. He has never surrendered, however, and each time his sterling manhood has only come out the stronger.

In i860 Mr. Lewis was married to Miss Mary Mathews, and of this union four children were born, of whom two are living. Frank and Fred, the former driving stage and the latter with his father. Mrs. Lewis died in 1894 after a happy married life of nearly thirty-five years. She was a faithful wife and a good mother to her children, and her loss has been felt in the community as well as in her family. Mr. Lewis has a good residence in Eureka, and is well known throughout the county where he has been active for so many years.

Source:
A History of the State of Nevada: Its Resources and People
By Thomas Wren, Lewis Publishing Company
Published by The Lewis publishing company, 1904