Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/717

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STEWART
STEWART

philanthropists." His widow. CORNELIA CLINCH, died in New York city, 25 Oct., 188(>. She erect- ed at Garden City, L.I. .(lie Cathedral of the Incarna- tion as a me- morial of her husband and as his mauso- leum, where she now rests by his side. It is represent- ed in the vignette, and was formal- ly transferred by Mrs. Stew- with various buildingscon- nected with

it, and also

an endowment of about lf;lo,000 per annum, to the diocese of Long Island, N. Y., 2 June, 1885.


STEWART, Alvan, reformer, b. in South Gran- ville, Washington co., N. Y., 1 Sept., 17'JO; d. in New York city, 1 May, 1849. His parents removed when he was five months old to Crown Point, N. Y., and in 1795, losing their possessions through a defective title, to Westford. Chittenden co.. Vt., where the lad was brought up on a farm. In 1808 he began to teach and to study anatomy and medi- cine. In 1809 he entered Burlington college, Vt., supporting himself by teaching in the winters, and, visiting Canada in 1811, he received a commission under Gov. Sir George Prevost as professor in the Royal school in the seigniory of St. Armand, but he returned to college in June, 1812. After the declaration of war he went again to Canada, and was held as a prisoner. On his return he taught and studied law in Cherry Valley, N. Y., and then in Paris. Ky.. making his home in the former place, where he practised his profession and won reputa- tion. He was a persistent advocate of protective duties, of internal improvements, and of education. He removed to Utica in 1832, and, though he con- tinued ti> try causes as counsel, the remainder of his life was given mainly to the temperance and anti- slavery causes. A volume of his speeches was pub- lished in 1860. Among the most conspicuous of these was an argument, in 1837, before the New York state anti-slavery convention, to prove that congress might constitutionally abolish slavery: on the " Right of Petition " at Pennsylvania hall, Philadelphia, and on the "Great Issues between Right and Wrong" at the same place in 1838: be- fore the joint committee of the legislature of Ver- mont ; and before the supreme court of New Jersey on a habeas corpus to determine the unconstitu- tionality of slavery under the new state constitu- tinn of 1844, which last occupied eleven hours in delivery. His first published speech against slavery was in 1835, under threats of a mob. He then drew a call for a state anti-slavery convention for 21 Oct., 1835, at Utica. As the clock struck the hour he i-allrd the convention to order and addressed it, and the programme of business was completed ere the threatened mob arrived, as it soon did and dispersed the convention by violence. That night the doors and windows of his house were barred with large timbers, and fifty loaded muskets were provided, with determined men to handle them, but the preparations kept off the menaced invasion. "He was the first," says William Goodell, the historian of abolitionism, "to insist earnestly, in our consul- tations, in committee and elsewhere, on the neces- sity of forming a distinct political party to promote the abolition of slavery." He gradually brought the leaders into it, was its candidate for governor, and this new party grew, year by year, till at last it held the balance of power between the Whigs and Democrats, when, uniting with the former, it constituted the Republican party. The character- istics of Mr. Stewart's eloquence and conversation were a strange and abounding humor, a memory that held large resources at command, readiness in emergency, a rich philosophy, strong powers of reasoning, and an exuberant imagination. A col- lection of his speeches, with a memoir, is in prepa- ration by his son-in-law, Luther R. Marsh.


STEWART, Archibald, member of the Continental congress. He resided in Sussex county, N. J., prior to the Revolution, and was active in the movements that hastened it. In July, 1774. he was appointed one of the committee to nominate deputies to the Continental congress, which was to meet in Philadelphia the following September, and in 1775 he was chosen a representative from Sussex county in that congress to fill a vacancy.


STEWART, Austin, author, b. in Prince Will- iam county, Va., about 1793; d. after 1860. He was born in slavery, and when a lad was taken to Bath, N. Y. He afterward fled to C'anandaigua, and in 1817 he engaged successfully in business in Rochester. In 1826 he delivered ah oration at the celebration of the New York emancipation act, and in 1830 he was elected vice-president of the National convention of negroes at Philadelphia. The following year he removed to a small colony that had beep established in Canada West, named the township vVilberforce, and was chosen its presi- dent. He used his own funds to carry on the af- fairs of the colony, but, finding that no more land would be sold to the colonists by the Canada com- pany, returned to Rochester in 1837. He after- ward opened a school in C'anandaigua, and after two years became an agent for the "Anti-Slavery Standard." He published " Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman " (2d ed., Roch- ester, N. Y., 1859).


STEWART, Charles, soldier, b. in County Donegal, Ireland, in 1729 : d. in Flemington, N. J., 24 July, 1800. His grandfather, of the same name, was a Scottish officer of dragoons, who, for services in the battle of the Boyne, was given an estate in Ireland. The younger Charles came to this coun- try in 1750 and became a deputy surveyor-general of the province of Pennsylvania. In 1774 he was a member of the first convention in New Jersey that issued a declaration of rights against the aggres- sions of the crown, and in 1775 a delegate to its first Provincial congress. By his adopted state he was made colonel of its first regiment of minute-men, then of the 2d regiment of the line, and in 1777 was appointed by congress commissary-general of issues in the Continental army, serving as such on Washington's staff till the close of the war. In 1784-' 5he was a representative from New Jersey in congress. His grandson, Charles Samuel, clergyman, b. in Flemington. N. J.. Hi Oct., 1795; d. in Cooperstown, N. Y., 15 Dec.. 1870. was graduated at Princeton in 1815, when, after studying law, he took a theological course. He wa> or- dained and sent as missionary to the Sandwich islands in 1823. but. owing to the failing health of his wife, returned in 1825. and afterward lectured through the northern states in advocacy of foreign missions. In 1828 he was appointed chaplain in