Sacramento County
Biographies
THOMAS LEWIS
Starting out in life as a Welsh collier
boy, working twelve hours a day, for six pennies, away down deep in the coal
mines, and rising from this lowly occupation to an inventor, manufacturer and
benefactor to the people of this great state, is the story of the man whose
name heads this article, whom destiny has put in a place of prominence among
the enterprising citizens of Sacramento. He was born at Wrexham, Denbighshire, North
Wales. An ocean and many thousand miles were between the boy and his
destiny, but inevitably they would meet, and it happened in 1881, when Thomas
Lewis came to Sacramento.
The parents of Thomas Lewis were John and
Ruth (Roberts) Lewis. They were not rich in this world's goods, but they
were rich in love for their boy and did for him what they could to the end that
his way through life might be less rugged than the one they had found. He
would necessarily have to labor, but labor under fair conditions would be good
for him, and they were determined that he should be able to labor with his head
as well as with his hands. Accordingly, they sent him to school, where he
got a glimpse of things beyond the dull horizon of his daily life. It
should be noted that not all the boys of his acquaintance were thus favored in
that time and place. As a boy of seven he had to go to work in a mine as
a door boy, and thus he was employed until 1875. At this time he and a
partner were working in the bottom of a six hundred-foot shaft, cleaning out
the sump; here an accident happened that was a hair-breadth escape. A
six-foot steel rail used as a balance on the engine became detached and fell
down the perpendicular shaft, but fortunately it entered the side of the shaft
above and away from them and buried itself in the rock. When told of
their narrow escape they thought it over and the next day started for New
York.
Mr. Lewis had heard much of America,
where all people were free and where poor people might become independent by
honest work and wise planning and careful saving. He had often dreamed of going
to that far-off land of promise, and so his dream came true. He traveled
in the east, working in landscape gardening until 1880, his companion being
Joseph Fardo, a Quaker landscape gardener, and then
they went to British Columbia and Alaska. After a year spent there he
came to California and settled in Sacramento in 1881. Some of the ideas
he had imbibed in his brief schooling had remained and certain of them had been
developed by his experience with the world. Not successful in finding
employment at his trade, his attention was directed to the profits to be made
at digging sewers and cesspools, and sewers and cesspools were even more
essential to everyday life than winding paths and banks of bloom, and -- was he
not in America to make his way, was he not here to do the best that he
could? That is what he could until he could do better. To some the
yielding to such necessity would have been tragic. He did not look at it
in that way. So he took the chance that offered and he has
prospered. Later he turned to the manufacture of fertilizers and chicken
food, and this venture has also been successful. He has not forgotten the
joys of landscape gardening. His taste for the beautiful in nature is as
fine as ever it was, and he may return to that work, but he is doing so well
and building up such a fine business that it is a credit to himself and the city. His manufacturing plant is
located one and a half miles southwest of Sacramento, where he makes the Tom Lewis
fertilizer, which is shipped all over California. This product is the
result of twenty years of study and experimenting, and wherever it is used the
fruit produced is superior in size, flavor and quality to that raised by other
commercial fertilizers, and the value can best be recognized when one is told
that he sold twenty-five tons to Morrows, who are interested in the Armour Packing Company. C. M. Phinney,
who has used his fertilizer on his orange and olive groves in Fair Oaks for two
years, in a letter of recommendation states that the fertilizer is superior to
any other he has experimented with, and that the first year's use yielded him
an orange crop fifty percent greater than in any previous year. A
seedling walnut, planted eight years ago, by the use of the fertilizer has
grown to the very large proportions. It has branches spreading a radius
of forty feet, is about thirty-five feet in height and is now bearing a large
crop of walnuts. Mr. Lewis is unquestionably a great benefactor to the
horticulturists and floriculturists of California, and his product is doing
more to build up the farming and fruit interest of the state than any other
single article.
In his political ideas Mr. Lewis is independent, trusting all parties as far as he can, trusting
none of them too far. He is a Methodist, helpful to all of the varied
interests of his cosmopolitan and democratic church. He has married
twice, and by his first marriage has a son, John Lewis, who is a
plasterer. His present wife was formerly Miss Nora Wilson, a native of
Nebo, Pike county, Ill., daughter of Austin and Lucretia Wilson, who came to Sacramento, where the father
was a builder. The marriage occurred in 1905 in Sacramento, and two
children were born to them, Bethyl and Anna.
Transcribed by Sally Kaleta.
Source: Willis,
William L., History of Sacramento County,
California, Pages 715-716. Historic
Record Company,
© 2006 Sally Kaleta.