Charlton Thomas Lewis

Background

Charlton Thomas Lewis was born on February 25, 1834 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Joseph J. and Mary (Miner) Lewis and the grandson of Enoch Lewis and Charles Miner.

Education

He was educated in West Chester and at Yale College, where he ranked high in the class of 1853, displaying special proficiency in the classics and in mathematics, and holding the office of class poet.

Career

For a year after his graduation Lewis studied law, the profession of his father. In 1854 he was admitted on trial, and in 1856 admitted into full connection by the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, serving on the Newark circuit, in Wilmington, and in Philadelphia. In 1857-1858 he was professor of languages in the Normal University of Illinois at Bloomington. From 1859 to 1862 he taught in Troy University, Troy, New York, first as professor of mathematics and later as professor of Greek; during 1862 he was also the acting president of the university.

In the winter of 1862-1863 he returned to the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at Cincinnati, but soon put this occupation aside to become deputy commissioner under his father, who had been made commissioner of internal revenue by President Lincoln. In 1864 he took up the practice of law in New York, and this was the chief occupation of the remainder of his life, with the exception of the years 1868-1871, during which he was an editor of the New York Evening Post.

In all of his fields of endeavor Lewis was successful, and to most of them he made some permanent contribution. Among his published works were an English edition, in collaboration with M. R. Vincent, of John Albert Bengel's Gnomon of the Greek Testament (2 vols. , 1860 - 1862), and A History of Germany, from the Earliest Times (1874), founded on David Müller's Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes (1872). Other writings of his dealt with the law of insurance, in which he specialized and on which he was recognized as an authority.

He was counsel to the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York and in 1898-1899 lectured on life insurance at Cornell, Harvard, and Columbia universities.

Lewis was active in politics and in other public affairs. In 1896 he was a delegate to the convention of Gold Democrats at Indianapolis, serving as a member of the committee on platform. During much of his life he was intensely interested in organized charities and in prison reform. He was president of the Prison Association of New York, 1893-1904, delegate of the United States to the International Prison Congress at Paris in 1895, and vice-president of the National Prison Association in 1897, and supplemented his personal efforts with pamphlets and articles. His work in this field, and his Latin dictionary, are the outstanding accomplishments of a career that was as unselfish as it was varied.

He died at the age of seventy, in Morristown, New Jersey, which had been his home for a number of years.

Achievements

• Lewis's most important book was Harper's Latin Dictionary, prepared in collaboration with Charles Short, which was published in 1879 and fifty years later had not been superseded in its field. It was followed by A Latin Dictionary for Schools in 1889, and by An Elementary Latin Dictionary in 1891.

Works

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  • Lafayette at Brandywine: Containing the Proceedings at the Dedication of the Memorial Shaft Erected to Mark the Place Where Lafayette Was Wounded in ... and the Historians (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Lafayette at Brandywine: Containing the Proc...)

  • An Elementary Latin Dictionary (Classic Reprint) (Latin Edition)

    (Excerpt from An Elementary Latin Dictionary In all other...)

  • The Love Letters of Bismarck; Being Letters to His Fiancee and Wife, 1846-1889;

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Harper's Book of Facts: A Classified Encyclopaedia of the History of the World, a Record of History From 4004 B. C. To 1906 A. D., With More Than One ... of Science, Literature, Art, and Government

    (Excerpt from Harper's Book of Facts: A Classified Encyclo...)

  • Place of Mathematics in University Education: Inaugural Address of Charlton T. Lewis, Professor of P

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Address To The Graduating Class Of The College Of Physicians And Surgeons At Their Annual Commencement By Charlton T. Lewis (1871)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Philosophers And Scientists

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • A history of Germany, from the earliest times

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Harpers' Latin dictionary. A new Latin dictionary founded on the translation of Freund's Latin-German lexicon, ed. by E.A. Andrews, Ll.D.
  • A Latin dictionary for schools,

Connections

On July 25, 1861, Lewis married Nancy D. McKeen of Brunswick, Maine, who died August 19, 1883. She was a granddaughter of Joseph McKeen, first president of Bowdoin College; one of her children was Charlton Miner Lewis, who as professor of English at Yale carried on the scholarly tradition of the family. Lewis' second wife, whom he married June 30, 1885, was Margaret P. Sherrard, of Michigan.

Father:

Joseph J. Lewis

Mother:

Mary (Miner) Lewis

Spouse:

Nancy D. McKeen

Spouse:

Margaret P. Sherrard

Grandfather:

Charles Miner

Grandfather:

Enoch Lewis

Son:

Charlton Miner Lewis

educator