Lewis settled in Kemnay where he worked at John Fyfe’s quarry, in charge for many years of the waggons drawn from the siding to the quarries.
He married twice and had 15 children, losing three sons in WWI, and another in a quarry accident in Kemnay.
He was himself injured in a later quarry accident.
In 1870 he was fined for poaching on the estate of Monymusk,
but he turned his life around and eventually became a Parish Councillor,
a director of the Public Hall Company, a member of the War Memorial Committee, and was involved in the making of the Kemnay pleasure park still in situ today.