Silas Wright Lewis, a leading resident of Rockvale Township, and a thorough and experienced farmer, was born in Saratoga County, New York, November 18, 1843, and is the son of the late Stephen Lewis and his wife, Judith Maria [Boyce] Lewis, natives of Herkimer County, New York, the former born November 25, 1818, and the latter October 23, 1822. Mr. and Mrs. [Stephen] Lewis were married June 30, 1839, and are the parents of two children, Caroline, who married George Clancy, and died in 1863, and Silas Wright.

When the subject of this sketch [Silas Wright Lewis] was a child of five years, his father, believing that the west afforded greater opportunities for advancement and progress, moved his family to Buffalo, and thence to Chicago by way of the Great Lakes, which place he left for Oregon, Illinois, moving later to Rockvale Township, where he rented successively, for periods of two years each, the farms of Hiram Read, William Irvine, John James, Hiram Gitchell and the Hill farm. Later he purchased two hundred acres on section 9, where he lived until his death, which occurred October 25, 1879, and where his wife still resides [1899] at the comfortable age of seventy-seven.

Lightsville Cemetery cemetery record shows Silas W. Lewis, b. Nov. 18, 1844; d. July 12, 1899.

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