John Lewis (1747–1825) of Fredericksburg, Va., was the eldest son of Fielding Lewis and his first wife Catherine Washington Lewis and the stepson of GW’s sister Betty Washington Lewis. His half brothers were George, Fielding, Lawrence, and Charles Lewis.

During the Revolution Lewis worked in partnership with his father in the manufacture of gunpower and arms for the army. After the war he served on the common council of Fredericksburg. Fielding Lewis died in 1781, and John Lewis, as one of his executors, was responsible for helping to settle his father’s complicated landholdings. By the terms of his father’s will he was to receive, after the death of Betty Lewis, all of Fielding Lewis’s land in Spotsylvania County and in Fredericksburg (Spotsylvania Will Book, Book E, Part 1, 434–36, Vi Microfilm). Lewis sold much of the land after his stepmother’s death in 1797 and in 1811 moved to Kentucky. John Lewis also inherited the North Carolina land that his father and GW owned jointly. This was sold to John Cowper in May 1791.