William "Uncle Bill" Lewis

Lewis's shop worked like a bank for freedom. Born in 1810 and enslaved by a Colonel Lewis, who taught him smithing, he paid his owner $350 a year to work in Chattanooga. By 1837 he had saved $1,000 and bought his wife's freedom so their children would be born free. Over fourteen years he bought freedom for himself, his mother and his siblings, for $5,100 in all. A free Black man could not do business in his own name, so he paid a white man to sign for him. By 1860 he reported a net worth of $7,000.

What the plaque says

William "Uncle Bill" Lewis Born a slave in Winchester, Tennessee, William Lewis came to Chattanooga in 1837, when it was Ross' Landing. After building a thriving blacksmith business, Lewis purchased his and his wife's freedom. In 1851, he purchased the freedom of his mother, brother, and sister. In his blacksmith shop, leg irons were forged and fitted for Andrews' Raiders, Union spies during the Civil War.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 0.3 mi
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 0.5 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.
• Ross's Landing — 0.6 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.
• Walnut Street Bridge — 0.7 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.

More markers nearby

• Abby Crawford Milton — steps away
• First Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the United States — steps away
• Chattanooga's First School — 0.3 mi
• Martin Hotel — 0.3 mi