Andrew Lewis, born in Donegal, Ireland, about 1730, was of Huguenot descent, his father coming to this country in 1732, and being the first white resident in Bellefonte, Augusta County, Virginia. In 1754, he joined an expedition to take possession of the lands lying along the Ohio, in which he acquired great reputation by his conduct at Braddock’s defeat in 1755, and for the part he took in all the Indian wars down to the time of the Revolution. He served under Washington in various capacities, and was with him at Fort Necessity. He commanded an expedition to Sandy Creek in 1756, and was made prisoner in 1758 and taken to Montreal. In 1768, he acted as commissioner from Virginia, to conclude a treaty with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, New York. “About 1775, when hostilities began again on the western frontier of Virginia, he received the appointment of brigadier-general, and as commander-in-chief at the battle of Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, gained a victory over the Shawnee confederacy under the celebrated chief Cornstalk” in what was considered the severest engagement with the Indians up to that time.

On the 1st of March, 1776, Congress made Lewis a brigadier-general, much to the surprise and disappointment of Washington, who considered him entitled to a higher rank; and Lewis himself felt that he had been slighted, but his patriotism triumphed, and he accepted the inferior position. Ill health, however, caused him to tender his resignation on the 15th of April, 1777; but afterward he accepted a commission to treat with the Indians at Fort Pitt. On his way home from the Ohio, he was seized with a fever, and died in Bedford County, Virginia, on the 26th of September, 1780, when only forty miles from his home on the Roanoke River. His statue occupies one of the pedestals at the base of the Washington monument in Richmond.