Butte County Biographies

JUDGE JOSEPH E. N. LEWIS

Transcribed by:  Betty Wilson, August 2004

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

            JUDGE JOSEPH E. N. LEWIS.�Judge Lewis was born in Jefferson county, 
Virginia, in 1826, and received his education at William and Mary�s College.  He 
studied law with B. F. Washington, afterwards of the San Francisco Examiner, and 
was admitted to the bar of Virginia, but did not practice in that state.  He 
came to California in 1849, in company with Mr. Washington, and settled in Butte 
county, where he continued to reside until his death.  He was present and took 
part in the organization of Butte county.  In 1851, Mr. Lewis was elected to 
fill the unexpired term of Adams as state senator for Butte and Shasta counties. 
 In 1853, he was elected county judge, serving with great credit to himself and 
his party�the democratic.  On the twenty-fourth of June, 1869, he was nominated 
by the democrats of the district for district judge, and that same evening died 
of heart disease.  He was sitting on the front porch of Peter Freer�s residence, 
talking with Mrs. Freer, when she, noticing that he was silent for a few 
moments, touched him and found that he was dead.
            Judge Sexton, in his article on the �Past and Present of Butte 
County,� speaks of him as follows:  �Mr. Lewis was a large man, mentally and 
physically, and of high intellectual culture, of strong, positive powers of 
mind.  He did not love study for its own sake, but when it was necessary to take 
hold of any question, and especially in his profession, he did not, and would 
not give it up, though it required weeks and months of hard work, until he felt 
he had mastered it.  He was a slow thinker, but a logical and correct one.  At 
his death, he was justly considered one of the ablest jurists in the northern 
part of the state.�

History of Butte County, California: From its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - Vol. 
II -  Harry L. Wells & W. L. Chambers - 547 Clay Street, San Francisco, Cal., 1882., 
pages 191-194.