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. The second-largest county of Virginia by total area, it completely surrounds the independent cities of Staunton and Waynesboro. Its county ...

– 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, 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 the Ohio River near modern-day P ...

(1774), he surveyed and settled the Greenbrier Valley 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 (20 December 1720 – 30 January 1788) was the elder son of James Francis Edward Stuart, grandson of James II and VII, and the Stuart claimant to the thrones of England, Scotland and ...

("Bonnie Prince Charlie") as king of

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. 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 forks approximately long each,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 in t ...

, 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 long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

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 (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 an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

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, 1736June 6, 1799) was an American attorney, planter, politician and orator known for declaring to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): " Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first an ...

and the

Continental Congress The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, for thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America, and the newly declared United States just before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War. ...

. In 1778, Stuart was commander of troops when the last Indian raid on

Fort Donnally Fort Donnally is an unincorporated community in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States. It is located along Rader Run Road in Rader Valley, just off US 60, approximately west of Lewisburg. It is also about southwest of Falling Spring. ...

, near Lewis Spring ( Lewisburg), occurred. (Lewisburg was named for Agatha's uncle,

Andrew Lewis Andrew Lewis may refer to: Law and politics * Sir Andrew J. W. Lewis (1875-1952), Scottish businessman and politician; Lord Provost of Aberdeen * Andrew L. Lewis Jr. (1931–2016), American railroad executive and US Secretary of Transportation *And ...

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 of 168 delegates from Virginia who met in 1788 to ratify or reject the United States Constitution, which had been drafted at ...

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, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...

. 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 Ohio ...

(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 (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

and in 1796 he sent Jefferson fossil bones he had obtained from a

salt petre Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . This alkali metal nitrate salt is also known as Indian saltpetre (large deposits of which were historically mined in India). It is an ionic salt of potassium ions K+ and nitra ...

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, "large claw") is an extinct genus of ground sloths of the family Megalonychidae, native to North America during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. It became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event at the end of the ...

'', 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 animals with vertebrae or a notochord. It also tries to connect, by us ...

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

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

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 Cornstalk (c. 1720? – November 10, 1777) was a Shawnee leader in the Ohio Country in the 1760s and 1770s. His name in the Shawnee language was Hokoleskwa. Little is known about his early life. He may have been born in the Province of Pennsylv ...

'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 Virginia colonial people People from Greenbrier County, West Virginia 1749 births 1823 deaths