ABSTRACT
Henry Clay Lewis, known to contemporary readers of his humorous sketches as 'Madison Tensas, MD, the Louisiana Swamp Doctor', lived a short but interestingly varied life. The seventh of nine children, Lewis was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 26, 1825, and was named for his grandfather, Henry Lewis, whose wife, Judith DIsraeli, was related to Benjamin Disraeli, a future prime minister of England. Lewis had lived in Charleston for only four years when his father, David Lewis, a furniture merchant, moved his family to Cincinnati, Ohio. Two years later, in 1831, his mother, Rachel, died, and Lewis were sent to live with his married brother, Alexander, who also resided in Cincinnati. In his brother's home he seems to have been compelled to perform menial tasks by his sister-in-law and was denied the opportunity for formal education. Finding this situation intolerable, Lewis ran away in 1835, escaping aboard an Ohio River steamboat.
