Sir Samuel Lewis (barrister), a founder of modern Sierra Leone

Sir Samuel Lewis KCMG (13 November 1843 – 9 July 1903) was a Sierra Leonean Krio mayor of Freetown and lawyer. Lewis was the first West African ever knighted and was the third Sierra Leonean to qualify as a barrister. Lewis was the first mayor of Freetown after the Freetown Municipal Council was established. In 1896, he was made a knight, the first West African to achieve such an honour,[1] a year after he had been appointed mayor.

Background

Lewis was one of nine children (eight sons and a daughter) of a Yoruba Recaptive merchant (in real estate and agricultural products) Elderman William Lewis of Oxford Street in the Freetown Municipal Council, and his wife Fanny. His siblings - Ebenezer Albert, Christopher Bright Lewis, William Jr, John, Josiah William, Emmanuel, Jacob and Caroline Matilda Lumpkin - were all political leaders and heads of the colonial government of Freetown. His parents were both liberated Africans from Egba in south western Nigeria.[2] Lewis travelled to England by way of the relationship between his father William and the captain of a merchant ship that was shipping goods from Freetown to England. He is buried in Acton Cemetery in West London, England.[3]

Political career and legal luminary

Lewis went to England in 1866.[1] He entered the Middle Temple, and then the chambers of Samuel Danks Waddy. He moved on to a chancery chambers, and was called to the bar in 1871.[1] He returned to Freetown in 1872.[4]

Lewis and other Eldermen who formed the Freetown Municipal Council were able to convince the Colonial Government with civil protest to relinquish power and the day-to-day running of the Municipal Council by Black Africans. In 1882, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.[5]

Sources

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press, 1984, p. 437.
  2. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  3. ^ "Acton Cemetery". Ealing Borough Council. Ealing Borough Council. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
  4. ^ Hargreaves, John D. "Lewis, Sir Samuel". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/72676. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-05-17.


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