Career
Lewis was established as a successful merchant before the American Revolutionary War. He was appointed as Commissary General of Munitions during the war, and commissioned at the rank of Colonel.
He and his second wife Betty resided on a plantation (later named Kenmore) in Fredericksburg. Like others in the planter elite, they were supported by the labor of slaves. Betty's mother Mary Ball Washington frequently visited them and had a favorite spot she called her "meditation rock".
In 1769, Fielding and Betty started construction of a large Georgian mansion on their property, which was completed in 1775. It has some of the most refined colonial interior finishes of any surviving mansion. Named by later owners as Kenmore Plantation, it has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Lewis died in Fredericksburg in 1781 at the end of the Revolutionary War. Before her death in 1789, Mary Washington asked to be buried at her favorite spot at Kenmore, and her daughter Betty arranged for that.
In 1833 a memorial was started at Mary Washington's gravesite, but never completed. Following the United States Centennial in 1889, numerous historic and lineage societies were formed; the Mary Washington Memorial Association held fundraising events and commissioned a memorial for her gravesite. It was dedicated in 1894 at Mary Washington's gravesite in a ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland of the United States.
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