His parents were Susannah Cole and Thomas Wells (listed by W.A. Schwartz as having been born in Virginia.)
Lewis Wells was married to Elizabeth (Betsy) Bates in 1771.
He died August 12, 1846, in Du Quoin, Illinois.
Lewis Wells served in Colonel Brandon's South Carolina Militia Regiment after the fall of Charleston on May 12, 1780.
Their most famous battle was the Battle of the Cowpens, January 17, 1781. Col. Andrew Pickens led a force of militia units under the command of Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan and his Continentals. Four militia battalions formed the first line and central core of the militia formation. Brandon's Fair Forest Regiment met the initial onslaught of the British under the hated Banastre Tarleton together with Hayes' Little River Regiment, Thomas' Spartanburg Regiment, and Roebuck's Spartanburg Battalion.
By eyewitness accounts, the Fair Forest soldiers were the first to fire on the advancing British, and the only ones who had sufficient time to reload and to take a second shot. Then, according to plan, they retreated and reformed behind Morgan's Continentals, drawing the British into the withering fire of the Continentals' muskets.
The militia regiments, once re-formed, rejoined the fight, and many accounts tell of Fair Forest soldiers wounded in hand-to-hand fighting.
[Continental soldiers were trained to be the equals of British regulars, capable of firing about three rounds a minute while maintaining their lines under enemy fire, and capable of using their bayonets when need be. Militiamen were neither trained nor equipped for that European, linear style of warfare. Morgan placed the militiamen at the front and told them to fire two rounds and then retreat.
[Tarleton's overconfident British troops pursued the retreating militia over a slight rise that concealed the Continentals. The Continentals fired, and then they retreated, but apparently not before reloading.
[As the British seemed about to run them down, they turned in unison and fired at close range, breaking Tarleton's command and giving a decisive victory to the Americans.
[Tarleton commanded the most mobile striking force in the expedition of Lord Cornwallis, who brought the war to the South in 1780. He took Charleston, crushed American troops under Horatio Gates at Camden, and then (foolishly) pursued the army of Gates' replacement, Nathanial Greene, into North Carolina. The defeat at Cowpens in 1781 began the process that ended when Cornwallis, exhausted and cornered, surrendered at Yorktown, thus concluding the American Revolution.]
In 1786, Lewis Wells received six pounds, seventeen shillings, and one and one-half pence for his service since the fall of Charleston in Brandon's Regiment. [The source mention's Anderson's Return, apparently not a military action, but perhaps the paymaster's report of the men present.]
Tradition has it that, in 1803, Lewis Wells, Thomas Taylor, the three Pyle brothers, Robert McElvain, and possibly others went to Illinois to assess the land and the Indian situation. They returned to Christian County, Kentucky because of Indian hostility. In 1812, some of the group moved into Illinois with their families, settling first near a fort about four miles east of Carbondale, on Crab Orchard Creek, then, later in Perry County. The 1812 date which is sometimes cited may be a little early for Wells; in 1817, Lewis and Elizabeth Wells sold five hundred and fourteen acres of land in Christian County, Kentucky, part of which they had purchased from Abner Pyle in 1812. This suggests the Pyles moved first and the Wells family followed a few years later.
Lewis Wells and Elizabeth Bates were the parents of Lewis Jr., Thomas Bates, Susan, Elijah, Martha Ann (Williams), Sarah (Pyle), Kiziah (McElvain), Mary (Pyle), Elizabeth Bates (Winters), Joseph, and Giles.
Many of the burials in McElvain Cemetery are early pioneers of Perry County, and they include many descendants and in-laws of the Wells.
"In the summer of 1780, Colonel Thomas Brandon was the commander of the Fairforest Militia Regiment. He and about seventy or eighty of his men were camped along Fairforest Creek about five miles below the present site of Union, SC. They were waiting on the arrival of two other militia regiments.
"They had captured a Loyalist named Adam Steedham and were holding him as a prisoner. On the night of June 9, Steedham escaped. He went to the camp of Captain William Cunningham (known to the Patriots as “Bloody Bill”), who was camped close-by with a band of Tories from the Saluda River area.
"He led the Tories back to attack Brandon’s camp the next morning. They completely defeated and scattered the Patriots...."
(Steedham, it is said, was hanged with a rope fastened around his neck "as a reward for his cruelties” by the brother of one of the men killed in the Loyalist attack.)
"Brandon's Regiment served in the following Revolutionary War Battles: ... Stallions, York County, July 1780, Mucsgroves Mill, 19th of August 1780, Battle at Kings Mountain October 7, 1780, and the Battle at Cowpens January 17, 1781."
Lewis Wells, Sr., a cabinet maker by trade, served in the Revolutionary War as a soldier in the South Carolina militia under Colonel Brandon. He married Elizabeth "Betsy" Bates, who was born about 1749....
Sometime around the year 1803, the Wells family left South Carolina and ventured into Southern Illinois along with the Taylors, Pyles, McElvains, and others. Finding the Native American population in a state of unrest, they moved back into Kentucky, staying for awhile in Christian County. Between the years 1812 and 1815, the colonists drifted back into what became Jackson County, Illinois, in an area that became part of Perry County in 1827.
Lewis and Betsy lived on this land until their deaths in 1846 and were buried in McElvain cemetery. All of their children were born in South Carolina and included Thomas, Lewis Jr., Elizabeth, Anna, Susan, Elijah, Martha, Sarah, Keziah, Mary, Joseph, and Giles.
Service: private: SC. He served in Capt. Thomas Brandon's SC Troops. On 30 June 1786, he was paid for supplies which he furnished during the war.
TWS Note: I do not know if Lewis Wells, Sr. was born in 1750 or in 1755. I have found conflicting information regarding his birth year. However, I am listing him as 1775 Yorkshire, England because Marian Callison says that is the information written in the family Bible of his daughter Elizabeth.
The memorial plaque installed at his grave site says: "Lewis Wells South Carolina, Col. Brandon's Reg't Revolutionary War 1750 1846."
However, the plaque was installed more than a century after he died.
"Thomas Taylor, a native of South Carolina, came into [Du Quoin] precinct in 1812, from Jackson County, to which place he had emigrated in 1803. Lewis Wells, also a native of South Carolina, an old neighbor of Taylor, and one of the early county commissioners, moved to Jackson County in 1804; and from there came with Taylor, to what is now Perry County, in 1812. Mr. Wells resided in Du Quoin precinct until 1846, the year of his death. He had reached the ripe age of ninety-six years."
Page 166:
"Humphrey B. Jones, George Franklin and Lewis Wells, Sr., were the first justices of the peace in the county. They were commissioned on the sixteenth day of February, 1827, sworn into office May 8th, 1827, and their terms expired October 1, 1827." Daniel Dry was among the justices elected next [apparently the great-grandfather of William Jeddy Schwartz on his mother's side; Lewis Wells was his great-great-grandfather on his father's side.]
Page 168:
On May 24th, 1828, Lewis Wells and his son were among twenty-three petitioners, led by Daniel Dry, asking the county commissioners to remove the place for elections of justices of the peace and constables in the eastern district of the county from the house of William Pyle Sr. They accused Pyle and his sons of "having disturbed the public peace at several elections ... by threatening to fight and abuse some of the qualified voters who appeared...."
The commissioners declined to act, the anonymous author of this volume says, because the allegations were not proven and the petition was not signed by a majority of the voters. The author suggests the petition reflects as feud. The county had appointed William Pyle to prosecute a suit against Daniel Dry for proceeds of a nine-dollar fine he collected from Lewis Wells Sr. when he was justice of the peace.
Note: The three Pyle brothers were William (c. 1773-1832), Abner, and John (1782-1851). John Pyle's daughter Sarah married Edward Schwartz, and so John Pyle was the great-grandfather of William Jeddy Schwartz, also the great-grandson of Daniel Dry and great-great-grandson of Lewis Wells, the petitioners against John Pyle's brother.