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Amos Lewis (1737 - abt. 1811)

Amos Lewis
Born in Shenandoah Co., Virginiamap
Husband of — married 1768 in Hampshire County, West Virginiamap
Descendants descendants
Died about at about age 73 in Rhea County, Tennesseemap
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Profile last modified | Created 14 Nov 2011
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Biography

Amos Lewis (b. 25 Dec 1737, d. about 1811)

Amos Lewis (son of John Lewis and Margert Reese) was born December 25, 1737 in Shenandoah County, Virginia and died about 1811 in Rhea County, Tennessee. John and Margert Lewis immigrated to Colonial America from Wales in the early 1730's, and by 1735 had settled in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

In about 1757 Amos Lewis moved from Shenandoah County to Hampshire County, Virginia, and there in 1768 he married Mary "Mollie" Chrisman (daughter of Jacob Chrisman, Jr and Madalin McDonald). Mary "Mollie" Chrisman was born around 1750 in Frederick, Virginia and died 1813 in Rhea County, Tennessee.

[This is the deep-seated hidden link between the masculine Scots-Irish and the feminine German sides of the Cunnyngham family genealogy; for soon after the Amos Lewis family migrated to the French Broad River area in Jefferson County, Tennessee, the daughter of Amos Lewis and Mary "Mollie" ChrismanMagdalena "Modlin" Lewis, married William Henry Cunningham at McGaughey's Fort. The story is quite a-MAZE-ing as well, a microcosm of the pioneer spirit that made America great! What is presented below is just a brief outline of the story that emerges when you look back three hundred years into the lives of these ancestors.]

Mollie Chrisman's father, Jacob Chrisman, Jr, had been in the first group of families that carved a wagon trail across the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1732 to open up the Shenandoah Valley. Jacob Chrisman Jr was born about 1729, and so was only 3 years-old when his family migrated with JOST HITE and about fifteen other families to the Upper Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Jacob's parents were Jacob Chrisman and Magdalena Hite.

Jacob's mother was born in 1713 in Ulster County, in the New York Hudson Valley where her father, Jost Hite, was working as a refugee from the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany — alongside several hundred other refugee families who had also fled the devastation in 1709. Jacob's father was born in 1706 near Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. He was also only 3 years-old when he sailed with his mother and five siblings from Rotterdam, Netherlands on June 21, 1709, and immigrated June 14, 1710 to Ulster County, New York aboard the Baltimore. Like Jost and Anna Maria Hite, young Jacob Chrisman is enumerated in the Palatinate Subsistence Ledgers of homeless Rhineland-Palatinate refugees who had immigrated to New York.

Magdelena Hite and Jacob Chrisman were married about 1728, and so the Chrisman family became part of Jost Hite's extended German community from the Lower Palatinate in the Shenandoah Valley. (Orange Co VA Land Record shows Jost Hite transferred land to Jacob Chrisman on 14 May 1740 — where Jacob and Magdelena lived the remainder of their lives along Opequon Creek near Winchester Virginia.)

Jacob Chrisman, Jr lived with his family near Winchester in Shenandoah until 1753, when he was 'patented' a Virginia Land Grant: "425 acres of land on Lost River of Cacapon, patented to Jacob Chrisman, Jr., by Lord Fairfax, September 15, 1753." He then married Madalin McDonald, born in 1731, and they moved to Frederick, Virginia and their new land in Hampshire County (now Hardy County, West Virginia). Their first child was Mary "Mollie" Chrisman.

And so Amos Lewis, who was born and raised in Shenandoah County, moves to Hampshire County, Virginia at age 20 and discovers the well-known Chrisman family from Shenandoah living on the Lost River. And they have a lovely young daughter who is a direct descendant of Jost Hite! Does it come as a surprise that as soon as she turns 18, Mary "Mollie" Chrisman chooses to marry the wonderful Amos Lewis.

Amos Lewis and "Mollie" Chrisman raised their family in Hampshire County, Virginia for eighteen years. (The 1782 census of Hampshire County, Virginia lists Amos with a wife and six children.) Then in 1786 they migrated with their family to the French Broad River area in Jefferson County, Tennessee. Two years later, at McGaughey's Fort, their daughter Magdalena "Modlin" Lewis is married to William Henry Cunningham, the courageous and bold young Scots-Irishman from the Shenandoah Valley!

Magdalena "Modlin" Lewis was born November 1, 1771 in Hampshire County, Virginia and died July 24, 1846 in Niota, McMinn County, Tennessee. She married William Henry Cunningham, who was born July 3, 1765 and died February 11, 1845 on the Cunningham family farm in McMinn County, Tennessee. Their burial is in the Niota Cemetery, McMinn County, Tennessee.[1]


Sources

  1. Entered by Kathryn/Jon Cunnyngham, 14 Nov 2011/26 Feb 2012.

See the Changes page for the details of edits by Kathryn and others.






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DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships with Amos by comparing test results with other carriers of his Y-chromosome or his mother's mitochondrial DNA. However, there are no known yDNA or mtDNA test-takers in his direct paternal or maternal line. It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with Amos:

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