Colonel John Stuart (17 March 1749 in

Augusta County, Virginia Augusta County is a county in the Shenandoah Valley on the western edge of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The second-largest county of Virginia by total area, it completely surrounds the independent cities of Staunton and ...

– 18 August 1823 in Greenbrier County, Virginia ow West Virginia was a Revolutionary War commander and pioneering western Virginia settler. A veteran of the

Battle of Point Pleasant The Battle of Point Pleasant, also known as the Battle of Kanawha and the Battle of Great Kanawha, was the only major action of Dunmore's War. It was fought on October 10, 1774, between the Virginia militia and Shawnee and Mingo warriors. Along ...

(1774), he surveyed and settled the

Greenbrier Valley Greenbrier or Green Brier may refer to: * ''Smilax'', a plant genus commonly called greenbrier Places in the United States * Greenbrier, Alabama * Greenbrier, Arkansas * Green Brier, Illinois * Greenbrier, Indiana (disambiguation) * Greenbr ...

and is known locally as the "Father of Greenbrier County". Owing to his ''Memoir of Indian Wars and Other Occurrences'', written in 1799, he has been called "the most important chronicler of pioneer history in southern West Virginia".

Biography

Stuart's father, the Scotsman David Stuart, was among the supporters of

Charles Edward Stuart Charles Edward Louis John Sylvester Maria Casimir Stuart (31 December 1720 – 30 January 1788) was the elder son of James Francis Edward Stuart, making him the grandson of James VII and II, and the Stuart claimant to the thrones of England, ...

("Bonnie Prince Charlie") as king of

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

. Soon after the failure of the Prince's cause at Culloden (1746) David found it necessary to immigrate to America. He settled in

on the

Shenandoah River The Shenandoah River is the principal tributary of the Potomac River, long with two River fork, forks approximately long each,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August ...

, some distance from the town of Staunton. At the age of twenty, John Stuart was a member of the 1769 survey by citizens of Augusta County, Virginia, which explored the wilderness of the Greenbrier Valley to the west in preparation for European settlement. The following year he built the first mill in present-day Greenbrier County, at Frankford. In 1774, he led a company of Greenbrier troops in the

at the confluence of the Kanawha and

Ohio River The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its river mouth, mouth on the Mississippi Riv ...

s. On 18 November 1776, he married Agatha Lewis (1753-1836), daughter of lawyer, surveyor and Virginia pioneer Thomas Lewis (1718–1790) and granddaughter of Virginia pioneer

John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American civil rights activist and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...

(1678–1762). In 1777, Stuart — then at Fort Randolph, which had just been built on the site of the Battle of Point Pleasant — witnessed the slaughter of four Indians including the

Shawnee The Shawnee ( ) are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language. Their precontact homeland was likely centered in southern Ohio. In the 17th century, they dispersed through Ohi ...

Chief Cornstalk who had been there to explain the Shawnee attitude toward the British and Americans. (Cornstalk's own desire was for peace but the young Shawnee youth wanted war.) These murders by a mob were denounced by

Patrick Henry Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 ld Style and New Style dates, O.S. May 18, 1736une 6, 1799) was an American politician, planter and orator who declared to the Virginia Conventions, Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty or give m ...

and the

Continental Congress The Continental Congress was a series of legislature, legislative bodies, with some executive function, for the Thirteen Colonies of British America, Great Britain in North America, and the newly declared United States before, during, and after ...

. In 1778, Stuart was commander of troops when the last Indian raid on Fort Donnally, near Lewis Spring ( Lewisburg), occurred. (Lewisburg was named for Agatha's uncle, Andrew Lewis 720–1782) He was among the city of Lewisburg's first trustees and in 1780 he became the county's first clerk, leaving many historic records behind. (His first office in Lewisburg—in his own yard—is still standing.) He attended the 1788

Virginia Ratifying Convention The Virginia Ratifying Convention (also historically referred to as the "Virginia Federal Convention") was a Convention (meeting), convention of 168 delegates from Virginia who met in 1788 to ratify or reject the United States Constitution, whic ...

and advocated ratification of the

U.S. Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constituti ...

. In 1789 Stuart built a large stone house ("Stuart Manor") at

Fort Spring Fort Spring is an unincorporated community and town in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States. It is situated along the Greenbrier River within the Greenbrier River Watershed. It was once a substantial portion of the Chesapeake and Ohi ...

(which he ended up commanding and which was later called Fort Stuart) near Lewisburg. The land on which the first county courthouse and the Old Stone Church in Lewisburg are situated was donated by Stuart. Stuart was a correspondent of

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...

and in 1796 he sent Jefferson fossil bones he had obtained from a salt petre cave about five miles from his home. These specimens fascinated Jefferson and were eventually determined to be tens of thousands of years old and to represent ''

Megalonyx jeffersonii ''Megalonyx'' (Greek, "great-claw") is an extinct genus of ground sloths of the family Megalonychidae, native to North America. It evolved during the Pliocene Epoch and became extinct at the end of the Late Pleistocene, living from ~5 million ...

'', or Jefferson's Ground Sloth. (With his publication of his commentary, Jefferson is considered to have initiated the discipline of

vertebrate paleontology Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct vertebrates (animals with vertebrae and their descendants). It also t ...

in the United States.) Stuart was elected a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 1797. Stuart died in 1823 and is buried in the family cemetery at "Stuart Manor" with his wife.

References

Works

*Stuart, John (1799; 1st published in 1833), ''Memoir of Indian Wars and Other Occurrences by the Late Colonel Stuart of Greenbrier'' (Reprinted in 1970 by Ayer Company Publishers 8 pgswith Charles A. Stuart as editor; Series: ''Eyewitness Accounts of the American Revolution'', No. 3), this memoir includes an account of the Battle of Point Pleasant and of

Cornstalk "Corn stalk" or "Cornstalk" may refer to: * The stem of a maize plant * ''Dracaena fragrans'' or cornstalk dracaena, a flowering plant * Cornstalk (Shawnee leader), a Shawnee Indian chief during the American Revolution (1720–1777) * Cornstalk, We ...

's murder. {{DEFAULTSORT:Stuart, John People from Augusta County, Virginia American pioneers American surveyors American people of Scottish descent Delegates to the Virginia Ratifying Convention 18th-century American politicians Virginia militiamen in the American Revolution People from colonial Virginia People from Greenbrier County, West Virginia 1749 births 1823 deaths