Lewis Men of Early New England

Profile manager: Kevin Ireland [send private message]

Under construction.

Introduction

We presume that some of the earliest settlers of New England who carried surname Lewis or Lewes were related to each other (on their paternal Lewis line), and some were not. While we can never fully prove that one 16th or 17th century Lewis man was the father of another, Big Y-700 testing can get us closer.

In this research area, we will try to identify the earliest individual male Lewis immigrants to New England, defined initially as Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. We may expand later to New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey. We will then attempt to assign male Lewis descendants to those ancestors.

Over time, we hope to convince male Lewis descendants of these men to take a Big Y-700 test to see which paper trails or correct - and to perhaps link a few of these men to their earlier England and Wales ancestors.

Autosomal vs Y-DNA Testing

Autosomal DNA (atDNA) tests (like AncestryDNA, FTDNA's Family Finder, 23andMe, and others) compare segments on chromosomes 1-22 from relatives to find significant matching segments at the same location. Matches of 8cM or above are likely to be related; matches of 16cM or above are definitely related. A match means they're related on at least one line, but not necessarily Lewis.

When two men named Lewis match on a Y-DNA test, however, this all-but-proves they share a common ancestor whose name was Lewis (or Lewes). The more matching tests from descendants, the more confidence we can have in our paper trail.

Visit the FTDNA Lewis surname project Y-DNA results page to see current groupings of known tested Lewis men.

...to be continued

Early New England Lewis/Lewes lines

While there are many documented Lewis men born in early New England, their genealogy is often uncertain. For example, we may learn that a John Lewis was born on a specific date and that his father was John Lewis - but that doesn't tell us "which" John Lewis was his father. Y-DNA testing can provide additional information to support (or disprove) a paper trail.

PGM Lewis Men

The Puritan Great Migration Project tracks individuals who migrated to New England from 1620 to 1640. Several Y-DNA tested Lewis men on WikiTree have named several of these lines as their ancestors. It's likely that descendants of some of the others have all tested but haven't yet posted themselves to WikiTree.

Here are the male Lewis men PGM lists as of 7 Jun 2023:

FTDNA Lewis surname project Haplogroup R1b - Group 10: Subclade R-BY42599

• Edmond Lewes (abt.1601-abt.1650)
  • John Lewes (1630-abt.1711)
  • Thomas (Lewes) Lewis (1633-1709)

FTDNA Lewis surname project Haplogroup R1b - Group 15: Subclade R-FT22332

• John Lewis (abt.1613-1657)

None of the other early Lewis men are linked to a Y-DNA test as of 7 Jun 2023:

• George Lewes (1571-1631) - not PGM
  • George Lewis (bef.1600-1664) - six sons?
    • George Lewes (bef.1627-1709) - six sons?
    • Thomas Lewis (bef.1630-abt.1709) - three or four sons?
    • Edward Lewes (bef.1634-1703) - six sons?
  • John Lewis (bef.1606-aft.1669) - four sons?
• George Lewis (1609-) - one known son
• Robert Lewis (abt.1607-bef.1644) (no known sons)
• Thomas Lewis (abt.1590-abt.1639) (no known sons)
• William (Lewes) Lewis (1599-1671) - perhaps 4 sons (needs research)
• William Lewis Jr. (1594-bef.1683) - 1 known son
  • William Lewis III (1620-1690) - perhaps 11 sons

Male-Line Descendants of Edmond Lewes-85

We have one Y-37 test shown on WikiTree by Michael Lewis, who traces his ancestry to Edmond and rates each step as "confident." Ideally, we would like to see matching Big Y-700 tests from male-line descendants of two or more of his six reported sons.

Descendants are documented at Male-line descendants of Edmond Lewes-85.

Sources

Acknowledgments

Thanks to all WikiTree contributors, but especially:

• Michael Lewis
• David Blair
• ...more to come