oilewis.html

The Mt. Adams Sun, Bingen, WA., June 9, 1966, page 4 with portrait

DEATH CALLS INDIA LEWIS WHO WAS GIVEN CHOICE OF LIVING IN BINGEN

Funeral services for Mrs. India Ada Lewis, 82, Bingen were held at 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 7 at Gardner's Chapel, White Salmon. The Rev. Kenneth Schellbach of Clatskanie, Ore. officiated. Burial was in Mt. Adams Cemetery, Glenwood.
Bearers were sons and sons-in-law: Clarence Lewis, Harold Lewis, Verley Woosley, Henry Ladiges, Wallace Davis and Maurice O'Grady.
India Ada Agee (who chose to live in Bingen because she loved it) was born Jan. 10, 1884 at Floyd, Virginia and was married to the late Aubrey Gordon Lewis on March 16, 1905 at Meadows of Dan, Va. where India's father owned a grist mill that is still in operation -- or was when Mr. and Mrs. Lewis celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1955.
In April 1908 Mr. and Mrs. Lewis left their home on the crest of the Blue Ridge Mts. and moved west to Glenwood Valley in Washington where "A.G." bought 80 acres of sagebrush and timber for the state for $1085 and sold it 40 years later for $16,000.
After freighting lumber and produce from Glenwood to Bingen from 1908-11, "A.G." moved his family to Centralia where he ran a store for three years before returning to Glenwood and building a house.
The following fall, he started a grocery and feed store in Glenwood which he operated until 1915 when the Lewis family moved to Bingen to put their children in a better school and started another grocery which he sold to Tom Norby in 1936 to return to his beef and dairy ranch in Glenwood.
When illness forced him to give up farming in 1948 "A.G." told India the she could choose their next place to live. She chose Bingen. After Mr. Lewis died on Feb. 2, 1960 she continued to occupy their home where she died of a heart attack Wednesday night, June 1.
She is survived by eight children, 17 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren and one sister, Mrs. Frances Colburn of Meadows of Dan, Va.
Her children, in chronological order, are Nancy, Mrs. Walter Kidd of Portland; Clarence of White Salmon; Grace, Mrs. W.M. Davis, Glenwood; Harold, postmaster of Bingen, Edna, Mrs. Verley Woosley, Bingen; Russell, Spanaway, Virginia, Mrs. J. O'Grady, Hermiston, Ore.; and Lorene, Mrs. Henry Ladiges, Jr., Glenwood.