Lewis Harris came from a family that immigrated from Poland in about 1826 and Ukraine in about 1837. My research into my family hasn’t been able to find out why they went to Merthyr Tidfil in Wales but possibly someone from Wlodawa, Poland and Brody, Ukraine wrote back to say that with the opening up of the Iron and Steel industries in Wales at that time it was a good place to come to.

Lewis’s full name is Lewis Glendower Riseman Harris. We imagine that using the name Glendower might have been a way of fitting in. Riseman has been given as a second name through the generations until today. The Family wondered if this was an original surname as there were obviously unlikely to be Harris's in Ukraine. With the Mormons believing in baptism after death, they have always looked at birth records. A few years ago they put on microfiche viewable at the UK National Archives the Jewish birth records for 1800-1830 in Brody. Knowing the date of birth of my great great grandfather and his Hebrew name I was able to find Lieb Reisman so a family mystery was solved as Ephraim Harris didn’t give his birth name in his Naturalisation application.

Lewis was born in South Africa in 1883. His parents lived there for a couple of years representing the shipping interests of a brother-in law. He was a dentist by profession and joined what became the Territorial Army in 1912. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1916 but the citation was lost when the War Ministry was bombed during WW2. Lewis and his four brothers were WW1 officers and all survived the war. Lewis died in 1923. On his death certificate the cause was difficult to read but seemed to say that he had had TB at some stage prior to the war with his war service causing it to return. His military record said that he was blown up three times in 1915 and later suffered from nervous debility.

There was a window dedicated to Lewis in the Hull Western Synagogue, which closed in 1994.