Susan Soloman was born in London in 1794. By her early twenties she had married the Welsh born Lewis Lewis and at twenty-four she gave birth to her first child, Annette. Nine more followed, including Elizabeth. Her tenth child, Albert, was born in 1833 and soon after she moved with the family to New York, where she remained for the rest of her life. One of her grandchildren, Hyman Philip Lewis, married Edith Rosalie Tobias, daughter of Isaac Alfred and Hermione Hendricks Tobias.