Lewis Family
Cleveland people have long taken a pride in and have appreciated the achievements of members of the Lewis family in literature and journalism. There have been three brothers of the name, all born at Cleveland, who have been distinguished in the general field of literature and journalism -- Alfred Henry Lewis, William Eugene Lewis and Irving Jefferson Lewis. And while referring to the family group we should not fail to note the brilliant young author and correspondent, Tracy Hammond Lewis, who is just now enjoying the early fruits of literary success and is a son of William Eugene Lewis.
All these three brothers were trained to other callings but found their most satisfactory field of effort in writing, presently leaving the work to which they were professionally trained for newspaper employment.
Their literary inclinations can hardly be accounted for by family inheritance. Their father, I. J. Lewis, was a builder with a specialty of heavy buildings, such as churches, colleges and the like, and his reputation in that field became so widely accepted that in almost every considerable city between Pittsburg and Denver at the present time may be found one or more substantial buildings that were erected by him. The Lewis family is of old Virginia stock dating back for more than two centuries, and in earlier generations there were connections with the family of Thomas Jefferson. At one time the Lewis family owned extensive properties in the South, including the celebrated Hot Springs in Virginia. I. J. Lewis married Harriet Tracy, who was directly descended from Lieutenant Thomas Tracy, who settled at Norwich, Connecticut, in 1608. The Tracys were allotted large areas in the Western Reserve in payment for shipping and docks destroyed at New Haven and New London during the War of the Revolution. Harriet Tracy’s father, Rev. Abel Tracy, of Cuyahoga County, extended his labors as a minister throughout the territory included in the Northeastern Ohio Methodist Episcopal Conference.
I. J. Lewis found that his business took him so often away from Cleveland that he preferred life on a farm for his family and for several years they all lived in Concord, a small town near Painesville. The Lewis brothers were educated in the Painesville and Cleveland high schools, attending the East High School of Cleveland while Dr Elroy M. Avery was its superintendent. The late Alfred Henry Lewis among American literary men was almost in a class by himself as a master of the short story and as a political correspondents. His admirers and readers, numbered by the hundreds of thousands, associated his name chiefly with the “Wolfville” stories and those products of his pen will doubtless be read and appreciated as long as any interest is felt in the old time life of the ranch and range of the southwest. While it may be too early to claim immortality for his literary fame, the readers of “Wolfville” are still legion and their enthusiasm is of a quality which does not moderate with time and change.
Alfred Henry Lewis read law with Marshall S. Castle of Cleveland, a brilliant lawyer of the old school whose memory is still alive among members of the bar. He was an extremely popular young man and an ardent student. Mr. Castle, his preceptor, frequently called attention to the ease with which his pupil mastered the profession. “That boy can read down the fold of a law book and he has both pages of text photographed on his mind,” he said.
Young Mr. Lewis was elected prosecuting attorney of Cleveland two months after his admission to the bar. He was licensed to practice thirty days after he had achieved his majority. For two years he officiated as city prosecutor and upon the expiration of his term went West in a concession to a spirit of adventure which took him over the entire southwestern cattle country. His four years as cowpuncher and performances in other capacities in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado equipped him with the incidents and experience which made him famous as the author of the “Wolfville” books. The first of these was printed twenty years ago. It was followed by others, from year to year, constituting a record of a day and conditions forever gone. The ranges are fenced, the vast herds of cattle are cared for by ranch hands, on a somewhat larger scale but after the same fashion, as followed by the small cattle growers of Ohio, Indiana and the middle states. The time and men he pictured, through the medium of his “Old Cattle Man,” are no more, but his Wolfville writings are accounted by literary students of the different phases of American life as entitled to a place among the classics.
The author died December 23, 1914, but his Wolfville and other books still enjoy a heavy sale. Between 1897, when he published his first Wolfville book and the time of his death -- seventeen years -- Mr. Lewis printed eighteen books which enjoyed wide vogue, and two, “Searchy,” the story of a New York boy, and “The Field Notes of a Reformer,” printed in installments in magazines, which are now in the hands of publishers. The latter is a tale of his experiences as city prosecutor of Cleveland.
“The Boss,” a political romance, “The President, “ “The Throwback,” “Ohio Days,” a series of incidents having their origin in the country schools and social life of northern Ohio, and other similar romances, also enjoyed a generous popularity.
“Aaron Burr, an American Patrician,” “When Men Grow Tall,” a story of Andrew Jackson, “Paul Jones,” and “Peggy O’Neal,” are four books of which Mr. Lewis was the author having their scene in Washington and are descriptive of the periods of American life, political and social, indicated by the titles.
After his stories of American life, Mr. Lewis was decidedly strongest and achieved his biggest work as a political correspondent. In that field he ranks among the highest and was the most widely read of any contemporaneous writer. Following his cowboy experiences he practiced law in Kansas City but after four years joined the staff of the Kansas City Star, which under the late Col. William R. Nelson, was approaching the height of its influence. His work on the Star attracted immediate attention and he was later employed by the Kansas City Times as its Washington correspondent. He subsequently became the Washington correspondent of the Chicago Times, of which his brother William E. Lewis was managing editor.
When Mr. Hearst came east from San Francisco and bought and revived the New York Journal, now the American, his first addition to the staff was Alfred Henry Lewis as Washington correspondent. Mr. Lewis’ name known widely at the time by those interested in national affairs. His employment by Hearst gave wide circulation for his writings in the various newspapers and magazines owned by that perfervid publicist and within two years Mr. Lewis’ work became the most widely read not to say the most influential of any sent out from Washington. His position was unique; he was consulted by publicists and statesmen of all parties and holding earnestly to a rule of action which he adopted after his term of office of public prosecutor of Cleveland, he religiously declined all offices of political preferment, appointive or elective. Three times, he declined nominations as congressman in New York in districts where nomination meant election. President Roosevelt offered him his choice of any foreign mission within the presidential power of appointment, with the exception of two. With the excepted two on the list Mr. Lewis would have declined as he did the others.
For a period of two years he was joint owner and edited, in association with Oliver H. P Belmont, a weekly illustrated political journal in Mew York called “The Verdict.” This was discontinued with the election of Mr. Belmont to Congress and Mr. Lewis returned to magazine work and newspaper correspondence. He also edited a magazine originally designed for the improvement of politics and society called “Human Life.” Of this journal Mr. Lewis was absentee chief, performing his labors at long distance. His home was in New York and the publication office in Boston, the natural home of the uplift. Human Life for a time had much popularity but after Mr. Lewis retired it journeyed to the discard.
For the last ten years of his life Alfred Henry Lewis was probably the highest paid and most prolific writer in America. He understood every subject and adorned it and died at the height of a life of usefulness and endeavor. It is said of him that he was the one writer who wrote as he believed without considering the policy of the medium in which his work was to be printed. His various arrangements with newspaper and magazine owners was that his work should not be altered, but printed, if printed at all, in the style and manner of phrasing which he employed.
His style was pungent, forceful and many times brilliant. It was characterized by a certain rugged originality of diction and it is doubtful if any writer ever used words, either in their native or acquired significance, with more effectiveness. He many have carried this quality too far in some of his writings, but it served him remarkably well in those special fields where his talents were at their best.
Alfred Henry Lewis’ one fault characterized him all his life. It was a frailty of genial nature and so pronounced as to be wholly admirable. His friends could do no wrong. On the other hand, those whom he conceived to be enemies of the public good, whether high in repute or office, had occasion frequently to mend their ways and reform their systems as the result of his writings.
The third of this trio of brothers is Irving Jefferson Lewis, who began his newspaper work on the Cleveland Plain Dealer after its purchase by the late L. E. Holden. Mr. N. S. Cobleigh, at this writing cable editor of the New York World, was city editor, and R. R. Holden managing editor. J. H. A. Bone, the greatest newspaper man who ever wrote for a Cleveland newspaper, was the editor-in-chief. He was the most helpful of editors and took the greatest interest in the younger members of his staff. The elder ones, he argued, had their habits formed and their course charted. On this staff a man with any capacity for newspaper work should grow.
Irving Jefferson Lewis was with the Plain Dealer for three years, when he joined his brothers in Kansas City as a member of the staff of the Star. He was subsequently managing editor of the Kansas City Globe, and in time, going to Chicago, held executive positions on the Chicago Herald and the Chicago Times. Twenty years ago he went to New York and for the last fifteen years has been managing editor of the New York Morning Telegraph. With his daily executive editorial work and the writing of general articles for his newspaper, Mr. Lewis has found time to produce upwards of 400 short stories or sketches of New York life. They are among the most popular of the syndicate writings sent out form New York.
William Eugene Lewis, second of the three, editor and publisher of the New York Morning Telegraph, has also done much to sustain the prestige of the family in literature and journalism. He acquired his early experience in newspaper work while devoting himself to the study of law. He was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-one and in the meantime had been a reporter for he Cleveland Leader. During the administration of Hon. George W. Gardner as mayor, he served as secretary to the mayor and as a member of the Board of Improvements. When his term of office expired he went to Kansas City and engaged in the practice of law with his brother Alfred Henry.
William E. Lewis is a man of versatile talents. His reputation has mainly been secured through his journalistic achievements, which have made his name a familiar one in some of the largest cities of the country. In the order named he has been, city editor of the Cleveland Herald, managing editor of the Kansas City News and the Chicago Times, had charge of the New York Journal’s (now American) Cuban correspondence in the early part of the Spanish-American war, managing editor of the Philadelphia North American, after its purchase by Thomas S. Wanamaker, and for the last twelve years has been president of The Lewis Publishing Company, which publishes the Morning Telegraph.
In politics by reason of family tradition perhaps, Mr. Lewis has always been a republican, of the independent brand, and has similarly inherited his religious beliefs and is in sympathy with the Methodist Episcopal Church. His home is at Great Neck, Long Island. He is a member of the North Hempstead Country and the Manhasset Bay Yacht clubs, and of the National Press Club, at Washington, and the Lotus Club of new York. He is also a member of the old colonial order, the Patriots and Founders of America.
William E. Lewis married Miss Frances Eleanor Oviatt. Her father, O. M. Oviatt, a former resident of Richfield, Ohio, was once extensively engaged in the cattle business and owned and operated a large ranch near Colfax, New Mexico. Mrs. Lewis’ paternal grandfather Gen. O. M. Oviatt, was prominent in Cleveland municipal and financial affairs at one time, and with his father Capt. Heman Oviatt was a founder of the Western Reserve College at Hudson. Her mother, Frances (Hammond) Oviatt was a daughter of Nathaniel Hammond, who early removed from Connecticut to Northern Ohio. The ancestry of Mrs. Lewis like that of her husband is of old colonial stock, their nearest forbears of foreign birth having come to America in 1608. Thwo children were born to Mr. and Mrs. William E. Lewis, a daughter and son. The former Ethel Oviatt Lewis was graduated from Smith College in the class of 1909, with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and is now Mrs. Waldo Grose.
The son Tracy Hammond Lewis is the other member of this family who has the family tendency toward writing. The home of his parents at the time of his birth was in Chicago, but he was born in Northern Ohio while his mother was visiting her parents Mr. and Mrs. O. M. Oviatt.
Tracy Lewis upon his graduation from Yale in 1912, which graduation it might be remarked was vastly gratifying from the standpoint of scholastic attainments, became a member of the staff of the New York Times. After a year he took a place on the executive staff of The Morning Telegraph of New York. At the time of the excitement along the border in 1916 he was sent as correspondent for his paper. Of he entire number of newspaper writer who viewed Mexico and its conditions at the time, he was the first to give permanence to his impressions in book form. “Along the Rio Grande,” which was printed late in 1916, was one of the most enjoyable pieces of literature having for its subject mater the period of hostilities between the United States and Mexico. The author was interested in the various subjects connected with the camp and border life which he saw, and he wrote with the freshness of enthusiasm which would have done credit to his uncle Alfred Henry. “Along the Rio Grande” covers certain sections of the Southwest and also the East and is frequently noted in trade journals as “one of the six best sellers.”
Tracy Lewis is greatly indebted to his mother for a fine literary taste. Mrs. Lewis before and for several years after her marriage wrote for several magazines and or Chicago newspapers. Her writings, chiefly in the form of sketches, stories and poetry, were characterized by a discriminating choice of subjects and the graphic quality of expression. Mrs. Lewis shaped the early studies of her children along the best literary lines.
For a year prior to December, 1917, Tracy Lewis was a Washington doing the daily work of a national correspondent. He took naturally to the discussions of national and international politics and found expression for his views in the Washington Herald, the Philadelphia Press, the New York Morning Telegraph and several western papers.
Possibly owing to his college training, Tracy Hammond Lewis finds much employment for his spare time in athletics, particularly field and water sports. He is one of the front division of trapshooters in America and also as a yachtsman has taken down many important cups on the Sound and the Atlantic. In December he received and appointment to the Gunnery Section of the Aviation Corps and was sent to San Antonio, Texas for military instruction. He was commission as lieutenant in the Signal Corps, and detailed as instructor in machine gunnery.
From Cleveland Special Limited Edition, Vol. 1, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago & New York, 1918