The Lewis family was a prominent Tallahassee family, active in the financial, social and civic life of Tallahassee and Leon County, Florida. Benjamin Cheever (B.C.) Lewis came to Tallahassee in the 1830's and began work as an apothecary. After twenty years in the drug business he sold out and entered into business as a banker in 1856. His three sons, George, Edward, and William, followed him in the banking business, forming B.C. Lewis and Sons, which was later named the Lewis State Bank. B. C. Lewis died in 1880; his son, Edward Lewis died in 1901. In 1929, William Lewis and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Bailey Lewis, resigned from the bank.
Control of the Lewis State Bank passed to George Lewis and his wife, Elizabeth Douglas Lewis; his son, George Edward Lewis and his wife, Sarah Davis; and his daughter, Sarah Everett Lewis Henderson and her husband, John Ward Henderson, Sr. George Lewis II, the son of George Edward Lewis, entered the family banking business in 1933 at the time of the death of his grandfather, George Lewis. The bank was continually under the Lewis family ownership until it became a part of First Florida Bank in 1974.
From the description of Papers, 1853-1967. (Florida State Archive). WorldCat record id: 32413241
