John Allen Lewis

John Allen Lewis (1819–1895) was an American newspaper editor who later became interested in American history, producing many works on the subject. In 1851 he established and became the editor of the Los Angeles Star, the first newspaper published in Los Angeles, California. Lewis came into printing and editing at an early age working for another newspaper editor in Massachusetts.

Early years Lewis was born on November 23, 1819, in Barnstable, Massachusetts. At the age of eleven, Lewis began to set type in the office of The Barnstable Patriot, and he later found employment in other newspaper offices in the Boston area. His father was Josiah Lewis, also of Barnstable. His paternal ancestor was George Lewis (Lewice, Lewes), who settled in Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. At eleven years of age Lewis apprenticed under the printing office of S. B. Phinney also from Barnstable who founded The Barnstable Patriot in 1830, Cape Cod's oldest newspaper.

Career In 1849, when the California Gold Rush occurred, Lewis moved to San Francisco, California, taking his printing press, and after editing a newspaper there for a short time, he took as a partner a relative and established the Los Angeles Star in Los Angeles. As managing editor of the Star, Lewis' editorial policy was non-partisan in politics, maintaining that, "I professed all along to print an independent newspaper, and although my own preferences were with the Whig Party, I never could see enough either in the Whig or Democratic Party to make a newspaper of. I never could muster up fanaticism enough to print a party paper."

Upon his return to Boston, Lewis married Elizabeth Ritchie, the daughter of Uriah Ritchie, a resident of the old North End.

Lewis has written many dozens of works which are listed in Catalogue of a collection of early New England books made by the late John Allen Lewis and now in the Boston Public Library. He intended to make his books and his knowledge of early Massachusetts history useful to students.

He was also connected with the Illinois Central Railroad, and lived in Chicago for approximately five years. The remainder of his life was spent in Boston, where he died on November 2, 1885, at the age of 65; he is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts.