Josiah Lewis was a successful farmer who came from Southington and settled in Bristol. He had nine sons and, according to the 1907 history of Bristol,
Nine sons grew up and married, to each of whom he gave a farm of a hundred acres, a house, a barn, a cow, a hive of bees, and a Waterbury sweet apple tree. Five of these houses, including his own, were built on the Farmington road, three near the cemetery and two beyond the woods of Poker Hole. Four of the Lewis houses are still standing, built much after the same plan, all large, spacious houses, such as those early settlers used to build, when the heating of a house was not an important item in the yearly expenses. They were built before the Revolution and for years formed an uninterrupted row of Lewis possessions.
One of these houses, at 11-13 Lewis Street, was built by Josiah Lewis for his son Eli Lewis, who served in the Revolutionary War and crossed the Delaware under the leadership of George Washington.