Joel W. Lewis

Biography

Joel W. Lewis was a prominent African-American businessman and abolitionist. He was among the best known and respected reformers in antebellum Boston. He was the son of Job Lewis (?–1797), a former slave who served in the Continental Army. He was a brother of author and entrepreneur Robert Benjamin Lewis. After attending Hosea Easton's vocational school, he went on to become the owner of a large and successful blacksmith shop in Boston, which employed both black and white mechanics. The shop operated from the 1830s to at least 1870. In the years before the Civil War, he lived at 4 Southac Street in Boston's West End. In 1833 Lewis became the first vice-president of the Boston Mutual Lyceum, one of several educational and cultural organizations co-founded by William Cooper Nell (apparently separate from the Boston Lyceum, which was founded in 1829).

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