Lewis Gardner, my great great great grandfather, was born around 1810 at Kershaw County, South Carolina. His father was said to have been a Scotchman who died in Georgia, but it was believed that his father was John Gardner, and now it is believed that his father was George Gardner. The grandfather of Lewis Gardner was Daniel Gardner, who was possibly a "Regulator" in the Carolinas and had hailed from Virginia. Tradition says that Lewis left home after a fall out with his father over a horse and he, his uncle and cousins came to Georgia where they settled on Sand Hill in Monroe County. Lewis married Martha Ann Sykes around 1834 and he fathered thirteen known children who survived adulthood and became parents of their own. He was reared to agricultural pursuits, was a member of the Primitive Baptist Church and owned over two hundred acres of land. He moved to Pike County in 1845 and farmed until 1859 when he removed the family by mule wagon on the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. He purchased a four hundred acre farm in Newton County, with stock and slaves and his sons fought bravely for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Lewis and Martha Gardner divorced in 1863 and he gave her the farm, custody of the children, and fifteen year old Negro girl, along with stock. He got a saddle, a bridle, a trunk of clothing, a Negro girl named Susannah, a boy named Ned, a boy named Henry, a sorrel mule, and his belongings. Lewis was rumored to have remarried, possibly fathered a daughter, his second wife died, and he sold his place, abondoned his family and went to Texas, possibly because he killed a Negro right after the Civil War in 1865. He migrated to Texas where he lived in Houston County for time, where he possibly remarried around 1866 to Elizabeth Hale Box George, raising horses and cattle. His sons followed him and Lewis spent his last years in Johnson County, but family lore says that he went to south Texas where he was a bad man around Brownsville. He was said to have been a horse trader, a horse thief, a bigamist, and a lawbreaker who went to Texas to raise horses near the King Ranch. Lewis Gardner was said to be good with a gun and a bad sort. He was supposedly killed by horse thieves at Natches, Texas while he was transporting horses to Louisiana to be sold, and he was ambushed. Lewis died well in to his sixties during the 1870's and was buried around Denton or near Burleson, Texas in the late 1870's.