David Lewis, son of David and (possibly) Jane (Crawford) Lewis, born, maybe, in 1694; married 17 January 1720, Mary Crawford, daughter of John Crawford, born in Virginia about 1694.

There is, as we might expect, much conflicting information about David and Mary. According to one source, David was born in Frederick County, Virginia, "where our Lewis bunch lived for several generations," but the date attributed to his birth (1694) seems a bit early for Frederick County, and the same source says that he was living "in a religious colony in Delaware" in 1735. This source also says that he died in 1795 (not impossible, but unlikely, since he would have been over 100 years old); other sources [citing Michael Cook, Pioneer Lewis Families, Vol. 1] say he was born in Pychyawaxon, Charles County, Maryland, 14 December 1694, and died in Cartaret, North Carolina, 11 November 1773. "Cartaret" we assume to be "Carteret County," but this location is far enough removed from Rowan County to be doubtful as a place of death without some explanation as to how and why David ended up there.

We do have on record land transactions for the Lewises in the vicinity of Opequon Creek, which flows through Frederick County, Virginia, and Berkeley and Jefferson Counties, West Virginia (then part of Frederick). David engaged James Wood to survey 516 acres "on Opechon," 21 November 1735, and 316 acres "on the west side of Opeckon," 2 March 1736. On 6 June 1738, John Smith (b. 1680) sold David Lewis sixty acres of the 420 acres near Middleway (Jefferson County), for which he (Smith) received the patent on 20 August 1734. Sometime before 16 January 1744, Andrew Hampton sold his 200 acres of Opequon land to David Lewis and Jacob Brooks. On 24 October 1751, for £50, David Lewis purchased from William Hiatt 184 acres "where Lewis now lives" on the east side of Opequon Creek, south of and adjacent to his son David's 400-acre grant. On 1 September 1756, after they had moved to South Carolina, David and his wife Mary sold 150 acres of this 184 tract back to Hiatt for £60, together with the sixty acres they had purchased from Smith, for which Hiatt paid them £100. [O'Dell, pp. 150, 153].

The information we have on the origins (parentage) of David and Mary (Crawford) Lewis is, at best speculative. David is said to have been the son of David and Jane (Crawford) Lewis, but we have seen no evidence of this claim. Moreover, we are inclined to think that some of our sources are attributing the "Crawford" surname to the wife and the mother of David only because he named one of his sons "Crawford." It is quite possible, in our humble opinion, that neither the wife nor the mother was a Crawford. We would be on firmer ground if we could identify a place of origin for David and Mary. A David and Mary Lewis sold land in New Castle County, Delaware, in 1727, 1740, and 1751, but according to O'Dell, they were "probably not the Opequon Lewises." There was also a David Lewis on the tax lists for Haverford township, Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1715 and 1718-1722. If this were our David, however, we would expect to find a record of his marriage to Mary in Pennsylvania (we have not yet looked for it). In a Genforum message dated 26 December 1998, one Judy Hughes states: "I have information that Mary Crawford was, in fact, born in 1692 in Guilford, North Carolina, and probably moved to Frederick, Virginia as an infant or a child." We will have to ask Judy where she got this information, which is, at best, improbable [There was no settlement in Rowan County before 1740. [See Samuel J. Ervin, Jr., A Colonial History of Rowan County, North Carolina (Raleigh, 1917)].