Edward Parke Custis Lewis (February 7, 1837 – September 3, 1892) was a Confederate Army colonel, lawyer, legislator, and diplomat who served as United States Minister to Portugal from 1885 to 1889.
Early life
Lewis was born at Audley, his family's plantation in Clarke County, Virginia, in 1837. He was a son of Lorenzo Lewis (1803–1847) and Esther Maria (née Cox) Lewis (1804–1885). His siblings included George Washington Lewis (1829–1885), Lawrence Fielding Lewis (1834–1857), John Redman Coxe Lewis (1834–1898), and Henry Llewellyn Dangerfield Lewis (1841–1893).[1]
Lewis was first married on March 23, 1858, to Lucy Balmain Ware (1839–1866) of Berryville, Virginia, and they had five children, though only one survived past infancy.[1]
Lucy Ware Lewis (1866–1944), who married Charles Treadwell McCormick (1861–1932)
On June 1, 1869, in Baltimore, Maryland, he married his second wife, Mary Picton (née Stevens) Garnett (1840–1903), the widow of Virginia politician Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett and daughter of Edwin Augustus Stevens. Mary was also his second cousin, since her paternal grandmother, Rachel Cox, was the sister of his maternal grandmother, Sarah Cox. Also, her brother Edwin Augustus Stevens, Jr. later married Lewis's niece, Emily Contee Lewis, in 1879. Together, Edward and Mary had four children, including:[1]
Edwin Augustus Stevens Lewis (born 1870), who carried on his father's legal practice in Hoboken
Esther Maria Lewis (born 1871), who married Charles Merrill Chapin and was a prominent socialite.[2]