Lewis was a newspaper delivery person for the Mt. Clemens Patriot when he was ten years old. As a pioneer journalist, he helped set the printing of the Macomb Statesman newspaper in 1838, when it was first published at the printing office of John N. Ingersoll, the proprietor and editor.
In 1845, when he was seventeen years old, Lewis made a four-week trip to the Lake Superior region of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with General John Stockton, a government mineral agent. On the return trip, Lewis took specimens of copper ore to Boston and New York City for examination of value. Lewis again traveled to Upper Michigan in mid-1847 to obtain samples of copper ore. On his return trip to New York City he met Horace Greeley of the New-York Tribune on journalism matters.
Lewis returned to Copper Harbor in Michigan's Lake Superior region in early 1847 and remained there until the November. When he returned, Thomas M Perry of the Mt. Clemens Patriot hired him as an apprentice journalist. Lewis stayed with Perry until mid-1848, when he took a job in July at the Detroit Daily Commercial Bulletin, a newspaper that had started two months earlier. Lewis helped set up the printing of the news of the presidential election victory of General Zachary Taylor in 1848 – the first time news of a presidential win had been transmitted by telegraph. Lewis worked in Michigan's government printing office at the state capital for Munger & Pattison during the winter of 1848 to 1849. He started the weekly newspaper Macomb County Herald in 1849 and worked there until 1851.
Lewis started the Port Huron Commercial newspaper in 1851, and continued publishing it until April 1855. He bought the Peninsular Advocate newspaper of Mt. Clemens in September of that year; the weekly newspaper was published under his complete control until 1863, when he partnered with Major E. W. Lyon in its publication and their partnership continued until 1867. That year, B. M. Thompson became another partner and the three of them ran the publication. The Saginaw Daily Courier was then started in March 1868 by Lewis, Lyon, Thompson and Joseph Leeman. In December, Thompson bought out all the partners of the newspaper and he subsequently sold it to the Saginaw Enterprise Publishing Company.
Lewis started several other Michigan newspapers including the Saginairian in 1869, the Mt Pleasant Journal in 1880, and the Bay City Daily Morning Call in 1881.
