The final resting place of Nance Legins-Costley’s eldest child now has a monument, thanks to Freedom & Remembrance Memorial volunteers and the local chapter of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
Amanda E. (Costley) Lewis (1834-1900) of Pekin and Peoria was born 3 July 1834 into indentured servitude in Pekin, but the case of Bailey v. Cromwell, which Abraham Lincoln successfully argued before the Illinois Supreme Court in July 1841, secured freedom for Amanda’s mother Nance as well as Amanda’s younger siblings Eliza Jane and William Henry. Through this legal case, Nance and her three eldest children became the first African-Americans to be freed from slavery with the help of Abraham Lincoln.
Amanda grew up in Pekin, where on 24 March 1858 she married her husband Edward W. Lewis (c.1834-1907), a tobacconist, musician and music teacher, and cook. After marriage, Amanda and Edward lived for a while with Edward’s parents in St. Louis, Missouri, but soon after settled in Peoria. During the Civil War, Edward served in the 29th U.S. Colored Infantry at Camp Butler in Springfield, returning after the war to Peoria, where Amanda and Edward raised a family of five sons, Edward W. Jr., William Henry, Ambrose E., Jesse, and John Thomas, and also raised Edward’s niece Margaret whom they adopted as their daughter. In 1877, she and Edward experienced the grief of the untimely death of their son Jesse, aged only 10.
During the 1880s and 1890s, Amanda helped care for her aged parents Benjamin and Nance Costley, who had moved to Peoria about 1879 after about four decades of married life in Pekin. Amanda’s father Ben passed away in 1883, and by the late 1880s Ben’s widow Nance was living with her daughter Amanda. Nance died 6 April 1892 at the home she had shared with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren at 226 N. Adams St., Peoria.
Amanda herself passed away at 226 N. Adams St. on 5 Feb. 1900, dying from heart disease, dropsy and bronchitis. She was buried three days later at Springdale Cemetery in an unmarked grave in the Old Public Lots. Her husband Edward survived her by seven years and was also buried in an unmarked Old Public Lots grave at Springdale. Amanda’s legacy includes a grandson, William Cecil Lewis (1895-1934), who studied science at Bradley University and served in the U.S. Army during World War I, as well as two families of living descendants of Amanda’s third son Ambrose.
The grave of Amanda’s husband Edward remained unmarked for nearly 116 years until the local chapter of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War had a Civil War veteran’s marker placed on his grave in the Spring of 2023. Placing a stone on Edward’s grave was an initiative of the core team of volunteers who had worked to create Peoria’s Freedom & Remembrance Memorial honoring the more than 2,600 Peorians interred at the former Moffatt Cemetery near the intersection of Adams and Griswold streets. Among those buried there were Amanda’s parents Ben and Nance and her brother Leander. Acting in his then-capacity of Commander of Col. John Bryner Camp 67 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, core team member Joseph Hutchinson worked with the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C., which made and shipped Edward’s stone to Springdale.
After the dedication of Freedom & Remembrance Memorial and Park on 14 June 2023, the core team’s members turned their attention to placing a monument on Amanda’s unmarked grave at Springdale Cemetery. Hutchinson worked with Steve Matheny of Abel Vault & Monument in Pekin, which provided and inscribed Amanda’s monument at a very generous discount. Amanda’s monument, which also commemorates her husband Edward’s Civil War service and her mother Nance’s victorious freedom lawsuit, was placed on Amanda’s grave last week.
The F&RM volunteers have noted the fittingness of the timing that Amanda’s monument was placed just before the end of Black History Month and almost on the eve of Women’s History Month.
