STUART, JOHN (1738-1805)

STUART, JOHN, farmer; b. Scotland c1738; m. 1787, Elizabeth Brown, d/o William Brown, English settler at Chatham Head; d. Miramichi, 1805.

According to tradition, John Stuart was a soldier in the 42nd Highland Regiment at the capture of Montreal in 1760, and the fact that men by that name served with the 42nd would appear to confirm this, but it now seems indisputable that John Stuart of the Miramichi was the John Stuart who served as a drummer in the 78th Highland Regiment, known as Fraser's Highlanders, during both the Quebec and Montreal engagements and until that regiment was disbanded in 1763.

In 1775 Stuart became one of William Davidson's settlers on the Northwest. The fact that he had considerably more land cleared in 1785 than any other settler strongly suggests that he was one of three unnamed tenants on the grant who did not follow Davidson to Maugerville during the Indian troubles associated with the Revolutionary War. Instead, these settlers, the other two of whom may have been Angus Gillis and William Martin, entrusted their safety to the Micmac chief Francis Julian and his followers.

In 1787 John Stuart and Elizabeth Brown were married by one of the Catholic missionaries, but there were evidently Stuart children born before that date, and this could have been a second marriage for Stuart. In any event, the large Stuart (later Stewart) family multiplied over the generations until there are now thousands of descendants, including a significant part of the population of the Northwest Miramichi district.

Stuart died in 1805, and his widow, who was somewhat younger, was soon remarried, to Neil McLean of the Northwest.