Lewis Rendt

Captain Lewis Rendt (born 1769 in the Holy Roman Empire, died 1849 in Canada) was an early 19th-century Hessian soldier of the Swiss Regiment, who later fought with the British in the Mediterranean (during the Invasion of Sicily), Spain, Egypt, and North America (during the British-American 1812 War). His regiment fought under the Duke of Wellington in Spain from 1811 to 1813. He was stationed variously at Cadiz, Malta, and Montreal.

While stationed in Cadiz in 1811 he married Juaquina (Josephine, Sophia) Ramirez de Arrellano. They had seven children, including Rachel, who married Francis Ramacciotti, and Frances, who married Captain L.R.Boynton and was the mother of Major Nathan Boynton, who founded Boynton Beach, Florida.

In the 1812 War he was an officer in the British-controlled Swiss Regiment De Wattville. Upon his retirement, he took to farming on the Canadian side of the St. Clair River near Port Huron with the aid of a Canadian land grant. He received 900 acres for his military service. He sold 100 acres back to the Crown, for the benefit of the Chippewa Indians. Later when oil was discovered on it the Crown reneged on the promise to the Indians and sold it to an oil company instead as written in Canada's Victorian Oil Town. He was also active as an agent of the state of Michigan in promoting Europeans to settle there.