William John "Uncle Billy" Lewis

His Story

William John Lewis was born around 1834 in Marion County, Tennessee, the son of George Lewis — a man who had made his way from North Carolina to Tennessee and whose family would eventually keep moving west to Missouri. William grew up in Tennessee, and by his early twenties had made the trip to Iron County himself. On October 30, 1857, at about twenty-three, he married Abigail Johnson in Iron County. Abigail was seventeen. They would spend the next four decades together on the same ground, raising nine or ten children and weathering everything the Ozarks and the nineteenth century could throw at them.

When the Civil War reached Missouri, it came as something close to a family affair. William enlisted in Company A of the 15th Missouri Cavalry on October 4, 1862, at Pocahontas, Arkansas. His brothers John, Andrew, and Benjamin enrolled in the same regiment ten weeks later — four Lewis brothers in the same unit. In October 1863, William was arrested and signed a Union bond and oath of allegiance at Pilot Knob. It wasn't a change of heart; it was the price of release. By early 1864 he was back with Confederate forces. His brother Benjamin fared far worse. Captured in the Christmas Day 1863 attack on Reeves' camp at Pulliam's Farm and shipped to Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, Benjamin died there on January 30, 1864 — one month after his capture. Benjamin's wife Naoma died not long after, under circumstances that have never been documented. William and Abigail took in two of Benjamin's five orphaned children and raised them alongside their own.

After the war, William bought 160 acres in Iron County — two federal land patents, cash purchases at $1.25 an acre — and worked that land for the next two decades. Sometime in the mid-1880s he fell from a horse and became an invalid. His obituary described him as an invalid for the last fourteen or fifteen years of his life — though a neighbor who wrote the notice added that even so, he was "energetic in business, and a good manager." He died on April 9, 1900, in Des Arc, at sixty-five. The Iron County Register called him "an old and highly respected citizen" and used his community title — "Uncle Billy," the Ozark honorific given to elders who had earned their neighbors' regard. He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Des Arc. His daughter Katie Lewis married John Wesley Robinson two years after his death. Abigail outlived him by nineteen years, dying on Christmas Day 1919 at seventy-nine.

Name Variations in Records

Community name:

"Uncle Billy" was a community title of respect given to trusted elders in Ozark communities — not a blood relation term. The Iron County Register used it in his obituary.

Wife's name variations: Abigail, Abigal, Abagail, Abbie, Abbiegill (the obituary spelling). All the same person.

Vital Facts

Children

Also in the household: Nancy and young William — orphaned children of William's brother Benjamin, taken in after the tragedies of 1863–1864. See Benjamin Lewis section below.

All Source Records

Connections to Other Profiles

• Daughter: Katie Lewis Robinson (1878–1946) — married John Wesley Robinson
• Son-in-law: John Wesley Robinson (1880–1941) — blacksmith of Des Arc
• Granddaughter: Opal Robinson Rayfield (1911–2002) — married Vernon Rayfield
• Featured in: The Rayfields — A Family History, Chapter 5: "Uncle Billy"