Henry Barton Lewis was born on March 18, 1908, into a Methodist preaching family in a parsonage in Cleveland Mississippi the son of Methodist pastor John Tillery Lewis (1874-1932) and Alberta Addkison Lewis (1878-1961). He was born into a long line of Methodist pastors in the Mississippi conference including his paternal grandfather (Henry Pope Lewis, 1836-1919), his father, his father's four brothers, and maternal uncle by marriage. He attended grammar and high school at various locations in Mississippi due to his Methodist father's itinerant ministry. He graduated from Millsap College and then entered Duke Divinity School in 1934, graduating in 1937. He was ordained into the North Carolina Conference and served two four-point circuits in Vanceboro and Alamance North Carolina until the fall of 1943 when Henry Barton Lewis enlisted in the US Navy Chaplain Corps on November 3, 1943 and was commissioned a Lieutenant. He completed Chaplain school (class 25-43) between November 8, 1943, and January 2, 1944, and was then assigned to the seaplane tender USS Clemente (AG-79) and served as the Chaplain for Service Squadron 7 in the South Pacific until the end of WWII. During his service with the USS Clemente, they participated in Treasury Islands and Admiralty Islands operations and then in the Philippines campaign in 1944-1945, and early occupation operations in Japan following the surrender. Lt. Lewis returned to the United States in early 1946 and was discharged from the Navy on February 17, 1946 and returned to itinerant ministry in the North Carolina Conference in 1946, serving until his retirement in 1973. Henry Barton Lewis was appointed to the Cary Methodist Church in 1959 and served until 1964. He passed on January 19, 2004