The Lewis Family of Pigeon Roost
This photograph, made in 1886, appeared in a Tri-County News article on 2/27/1969. It shows several men from the Lewis family of Pigeon Roost. Massey Lewis, who supplied the photo, said that the men all “let the hair grow on their lips” specifically in preparation for the photo. They are photographed at their home (no longer standing), which was reportedly the first weather-boarded and painted house on Pigeon Roost Creek.
Seated left to right are Cornelius Lewis, Rev. Joe Lewis, and Isaac Lewis. Standing left to right are John Goodson Lewis, sister Hester Lewis Webb, Lusk Lewis, and Waightstill Hughes, their half-brother.
These were only half the children of John Goodson Lewis, born 1824, the son of pioneer Matthew Lewis (born 1798 in Georgia; died 1838) and Martha Roberts (1801-1880). John Goodson Lewis married Cecelia Elizabeth Honeycutt (1830-1916). The family once “owned much land around Pigeon Roost,” according to the newspaper article.
Children of John Goodson and Cecelia were:
After John Goodson Lewis’s death in 1872, his widow Cecelia remarried, to Godfrey Hughes. Their son Waighstill Hughes (1876-1952), also shown in the photograph, brought the number of children to which she’d given birth to at least 13!
Historian Christopher Oldstone-Moore says that, “The history of mustaches is the history of masculinity.” Various styles of mustaches have been popular through the ages, including handlebar, walrus, Fu Manchu, pencil, and natural; it appears that the Lewis brothers sport the “natural” style.
According to Wikipedia, mustaches became popular after the Civil War and “peaked in the 1880s and 1890s coinciding with a popularity of the military virtues of the day.” By the turn of the 20th century, mustaches were out of fashion once again. Are they coming back?