Cicero Hunt Lewis
| Cicero Hunt Lewis | |
|---|---|
C.H. Lewis
|
|
| Born | December 22, 1826 Cranbury, New Jersey |
| Died | January 5, 1897 Portland, Oregon, United States |
| Cause of death | stroke |
| Nationality | U.S. |
| Occupation | Merchant, investor |
| Spouse(s) | Clementine Couch |
| Children | 11 |
| Relatives | John H. Couch, father-in-law |
Cicero Hunt Lewis (1826–1897) was a prominent merchant and investor in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon during the second half of the 19th century. Born in New Jersey, Lewis and a friend, Lucius Allen, traveled across the continent in 1851 to open a dry goods and grocery store in what was then a frontier town of about 800 people living along the west bank of the Willamette River. By 1880, their firm, Allen & Lewis, had become one of the leading wholesale grocery companies on the West Coast.
Supporting transportation projects that affected his business, he was a member of the Portland River Channel Improvement Committee in the 1860s, invested in the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company in the 1870s, and was appointed to the original Port of Portland Commission in the 1890s. He helped form a local subscription library in the 1860s, and he was named to the city's first water board in the 1880s.
Married to Clementine Couch, daughter of another prominent Portland pioneer, Lewis fathered 11 children and after 1881 lived in a large, elegantly furnished house within walking distance of his office. He spent most of his time at work or at home, and had few other interests aside from church and charitable donations. He died in 1897 while walking to work on a Saturday afternoon.
Born in 1826 in Cranbury, New Jersey, Lewis moved with his parents at age 13 to Newburgh, New York. At age 20, he went to New York City to work in the dry-goods business of Chambers, Heiser & Company.
John DeWitt, a New York merchant, hired Lewis in 1851 to assist DeWitt's son-in-law, Lucius Allen, in running a wholesale supply house in Portland, a frontier settlement on the West Coast. Portland, with a population of about 800, was in good position to trade via the Willamette and Columbia rivers and the Pacific Ocean with San Francisco and other ports and by land with an increasing number of pioneer farmers in the Willamette Valley. Allen, a friend of Lewis, had tried and failed in 1850 to establish a Portland branch store, and DeWitt thought that the more experienced Lewis would be able to help. In 1883 after several setbacks, the two men opened their own business (independent of New York) in a rented store at Front and "B" (Burnside) streets. They specialized in dry goods and groceries, building customer loyalty by selling at a fixed price, extending credit to reliable customers, and offering free space in their safe for storage of their customers' gold.
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