Born on February 25, 1842, in Newport, Rhode Island, Idawalley Zoradia Lewis, known throughout life as Ida, grew up and attended public schools there until 1857, when the family moved to Lime Rock in Newport Harbor, where her father was keeper of the lighthouse. Before long her father incurred a disability that forced her to assume much of his work. Her daily rowing of her younger siblings to the mainland for school amply prepared her for trials to come. In 1858 or 1859 she rescued four young men whose pleasure boat had capsized in the harbor. On a cold winter day in 1866 she rescued a drunken sailor whose boat had foundered in the stormy waters. In 1867, during a terrific gale, she rescued three sheepherders who had gone into the water after a valuable sheep; she subsequently also saved the sheep, which belonged to August Belmont. Later that year she rescued a man marooned on a rock. In March 1869 she rushed hatless, coatless, and shoeless to the aid of two soldiers from Fort Adams whose sailboat had overturned in a squall.
This last feat came to the notice of a New York reporter, and within weeks Ida Lewis was known throughout the nation. In July a celebration was held in her honor in Newport, and she was given a skiff, named Rescue. The financier James Fisk later built her a boathouse. In October 1870 she married William H. Wilson, a fisherman of Black Rock, Connecticut, but they separated after a short time and she resumed her maiden name and her duties at Lime Rock. She rescued three soldiers from a reef in 1877, two more in 1881, and as late as 1906, at the age of sixty-four, saved a woman vacationer from the water. In 1879, after more than 20 years as de facto keeper of the Lime Rock lighthouse, she was finally given the job officially by the federal government. In 1906 she was given a pension by the Carnegie Hero Fund and a gold medal by the American Cross of Honor Society. Other honors had been accorded her at various times by the Rhode Island legislature and the Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York. Ida Lewis died on Lime Rock, Rhode Island, on October 24, 1911.
