James Frederick Lewis
James Frederick Lewis (c1840-1901)
1901 Obituary [1]
JAMES FREDERICK LEWIS died at Boston, United States, on July 22, 1901, at the age of sixty-one. He was born at Blandford, Mass., on May 26, 1840. About 1876 lie became superintendent for the Manhattan Mining Company of its brown haematite mines near Amenia, New York. The brown haematite mines east of the Hudson River then supplied, for the most part, the charcoal blast-furnaces of the region, but owing to the exhaustion of the fuel resources, the increased expense of mining, and the reduced value of charcoal iron, the whole of the furnaces had to be shut down.
In 1881 he accepted the superintendency of the coke blast-furnace of the Pennsylvania and Virginia Coal and Iron Company at Quinnemont, West Virginia, and the great furnace of the same Company near Staunton, Virginia. In the earlier years of his life he had formed a partnership with the two brothers Rand in Massachusetts as whip manufacturers, and in 1884 his former partners called him into the service of the Rand Drill Company, which had already become one of the leading American concerns manufacturing power-drills. His wide acquaintance among mining men in both North and South, coupled with his geniality, soon made itself felt in a great extension of the business of the Company, and in 1892 it was found advisable to establish a branch house in Chicago, of which lie was placed in charge. In 1890 the Canadian Rand Drill Company was organised for the purpose of manufacturing, as well as selling, the drills, compressors, &c., required by the mines of Canada. Of this new company he was the president, and in 1898 he took up his residence in Canada, where the shops of the Company at Sherbrook, in the province of Quebec, were designed by him and erected under his supervision. As soon as he went into the mining business at Amenia in 1875, he became a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, in which Society he took a very great interest, and became Vice-President in 1886. He contributed to the Transactions of that Society several important papers on iron ore mining. He was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1891, and as chairman of the New York Reception Committee during the memorable visit to America in 1890, he rendered conspicuous service as the organiser of the remarkable programme.