Micajah Green Lewis

Micajah Green Lewis (b. February 14, 1805) was an American political aide who was killed in a duel in New Orleans in 1805.

Biography Lewis was the son of an American Revolutionary War veteran and North Carolina state legislator named William Terrell Lewis. Lewis was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina in the early 1780s. His 21-year-old sister Eliza Lewis Claiborne and her baby, Cornelia Tennessee Claiborne, both died of yellow fever in September 1804. The article suggested that Gov. Claiborne was out of mourning for his wife too early: "Methought it was a night in the month of December A.D. 1804. All in the city were hushed and still. I was passing near the Government House. Suddenly the sound of music burst from the hall. I listened the guests were dancing...The shouts of the guests seemed to pierce her soul. She clasped her hands in agony, then turned her eyes to Heaven she bent her willing steps towards the graves of Louisiana."

Lewis is buried near his sister and her baby in the Protestant section of the St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans. When Lewis' brother-in-law and sister Thomas and Sarah Claiborne died back in Tennessee, future U.S. president Andrew Jackson became guardian of their son Micajah Lewis Claiborne, who had likely been named in honor of Micajah Green Lewis.

Lewis' opponent in the duel, Robert Sterry, was a graduate of Brown University and the son of Cyprian Sterry, who has been described as "most active slave trader" in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1790s. Sterry became an officer in the regular U.S. Army, retiring as a major, and was appointed to be an envoy to France. He died on the Helen, a ship returning from Bordeaux, during a winter storm off Southampton, Long Island in 1820.