Lewis was the oldest of eight children born to Rev. John Foster, Sr. and Elizabeth (Lewis). He married Nancy Ann (Davis) and together they had nine children: Thomas, Elizabeth, Rebecca, Cassandra, Rachel, Joshua Clay, John Lewis, Benjamin and Joseph.

Rev. Lewis Foster Jr.

(Pennsylvania to Ohio in 1806 - from "The History of Madison County")
Through a cold and windy night I hear the voices of an accappela chorus coming through a chilling Lake Erie wind. I draw closer to a crude and old log cabin and peering through one small candle-lit window I see a small group of men, woman, and children singing "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" an old Methodist hymn written by Charles Wesley. They are Methodists, fresh from Pennsylvania, pioneers to the Ohio region. It is Lewis Fosters cabin and the year is 1808....

(from page 628)
Although he came with his family in 1806, it must have taken his family two years of his and his family's time to clear the land for soft winter wheat, but now those years had passed and he must be about the calling he had dedicated himself to. In 1806 he brought with him his wife and six children, John, Joshua, Cassandra, Benjamin, Joseph, and Rachel, and one married son, Thomas. They settled south of the present site of the chapel (named in his honor) on land given to him by their father, Rev. Foster.
The land had been previously built upon by a certain Jonathan Alder. Rev. Lewis Foster, a Methodist preacher, came out to look up a location, and finding this land with a house already built to which no one had laid claim, he went to Chillicothe, and purchased the whole tract of 1,000 acres. Alder was living in the cabin about two months, when Mr. Fosters son notified him that his father had bought the land, and thus, though his ignorance of the white man's laws, he again lost the site of his intended home.

(from page 284)
On this farm Francis Downing, son-in-law of Lewis Foster, settled, near the present site of Foster Chapel. Francis Downing and wife had one child, and in February, 1807 another child, Jerima, was born. John Tomlinson, another son-in-law of Rev. Foster, came in the fall of 1806 with two children. They settled in a log cabin which had no floor, and there wintered. The building was entirely surrounded by the primeval forest. It was chinked, but the openings were not plastered. The following spring, a second hut was erected, and each occupied their respective houses, and life began in earnest. They remained long enough to open out good farms, when Tomlinson's family moved to Northern Ohio and none of the posterity now remain in the county. Of the Downing family , all moved to Indiana, save Jemima, the widow of the late Israel Brown, and the only one now living in the county. Her four brothers are scattered over the far west.

(page 634)
The first society organized within the present limits of Jefferson Township was that of Foster Chapel, which met at the residence of Rev. Lewis Foster in 1808, and organized a small society. Names consistuting the original class: Lewis Foster and wife, Nancy; Joshua, John, Benjamin and Joseph, four sons of Rev, Lewis, and their wives; Rebecca Tomlinson; Cassa Dwyer; Joseph Downing, his brother, Frank and their wives; John Hayden, wife and family.

(page 571)
Rev. Lewis Foster is the earliest resident minister of Madison County, a Methodist preacher, who settled in what is now Jefferson Township in the fall of 1806, but having been to that vicinity as early as 1805. The spread of Methodism in Madison County had been rapid.
During his entire residence in Madison County, he served as a local minister. He died in Illinois, aged nearly one hundred years, and followed preaching until within a few weeks of his death.

(from "John C. Foster and Kinfolk", publish. 1969, now out of print- author: Chattie (Foster) Cox, of Sutherland, Nebraska)
About 1835, Lewis Foster and some of his family moved west to Illinois, settling in Fulton County, where he built a church. Lewis and his wife, Ann, as well as many other members of his family are buried in this churchyard near Fairview, Illinois. an arch on the entrance gate reads "Foster Cemetery".
Ann (Davis) Foster died in 1839. Lewis lived until 1852, spending his declining years in the home of a grandson, William Foster, who married Hanna Alder.

(from a letter dated December 5, 1982 from Loren E. Foster of Sherrard, Illinois to Laurence Foster Bates, Sr.)
The story is told that the 160 acres farm Lewis left to his family was finally inherited by two unmarried Foster sisters (Joshua's daughters; Cassandra and Martha) who in turn leased the coal mining rights to the Peabody Coal Company. The Foster Cemetery Association was left these royalties for maintenance. I'm sorry to say, the surrounding land is laid to ruin and waste by this company's strip mining.