The
House of Burgesses had authorized creation of still-vast Augusta County in 1738, but seven years passed before European settlement had grown enough to justify organizing the county's government. Thomas Lewis became one of the first county judges (commissioners) in 1745. Shortly afterward, in 1746, Lewis and
Peter Jefferson surveyed part of the boundaries of
Lord Fairfax's 5,282,000 acre (61,000 km2) land grant (see the
Fairfax Line). Lewis kept detailed journals of several surveying expeditions, which provide a historical view of early western Virginia. In 1746 he laid out the first Staunton town
plat for what was originally called Beverley's Mill Place. Lewis held a number of local offices, and was surveyor of Augusta County for many years beginning in 1746. He also became a founding trustee of Liberty Hall, formerly the Augusta Academy, which in 1776 was renamed in a burst of revolutionary fervor and relocated to
Lexington, Virginia. Other founding trustees included his brother
Andrew Lewis,
Samuel McDowell,
Sampson Mathews, George Moffett,
William Preston, and
James Waddel. Finally receiving a state charter in 1782, Liberty Hall would be renamed again, to Washington College and eventually became
Washington and Lee University. It is now the country's ninth oldest institution of higher education. In 1778, the year the Virginia General Assembly split Augusta County in order to create Rockingham County, Thomas Lewis journeyed even further along the Ohio River to
Pittsburgh. He was among the men who negotiated the controversial
Treaty of Fort Pitt (1778) with the
Delaware Indians, guaranteeing their neutrality for the rest of the war. He was one of the Virginia commissioners appointed to negotiate a resolution in 1779 with
Pennsylvania over the two states'
western-border dispute. In 1788, Lewis became one of the delegates for Rockingham County, along with his brother-in-law
Gabriel Jones, to the
Virginia convention which ultimately ratified the
U.S. Constitution. ==Death and legacy==