John Stewart

“ Albany's eldest son, Robert, earl of Fife, died about 1420; the youngest son James escaped to the highlands, collected a band of freebooters, and attacked the burgh of Dumbarton, which he sacked and gave to the sword, killing, among others, the king's uncle, Sir John Stewart of Dundonald, known as ‘the Red Stewart.’ He then retired to the highlands, but, being hard pressed, made his escape to Ireland, where he married one of the Macdonalds, and had a son James, ancestor of the Stewarts of Ardvoirlech. ”

“ Stewart (Colonel) , governor of the castle of Doune.--Sir W. Scott, Waverley (time, George II.) .
Stewart (Prince Charles Edward) , surnamed “The Chevalier” by his friends, and “The Pretender” by his foes. Sir W. Scott introduces him in Waverley, and again in Redgauntlet, where he appears disguised as “Father Buonaventura.” (Now generally spelt Stuart.)
Stewart (Walking) , John Stewart, the English traveller, who travelled on foot through Hindûstan, Persia, Nubia, Abyssinia, the Arabian Desert, Europe and the United States (died 1822) .
A most interesting man,... ”

“ And then bespake William Stewart,
These were the words said hee:
'If thou beate thy daughter for my sake,
Thou'st beate a hundred men and mee.'
Then bespake Iohn Stewart-+-
Lord! an angry man was hee-+-
'O churle, if thou wouldest not haue macht with my brother,
Thou might haue answerd him curteouslye.'
'O hold thy peace, Iohn Stewart,
And chamber thy words now, I bidd thee;
If thou chamber not thy words soone,
Thou'st loose a good service; soe shalt thou doe me.'
'Marry! hang them that cares,' saies Iohn Stewart,
'Either for thy service or for thee ”

“ In August 1808 Stewart left his office for a time to command the hussar brigade in the corps sent out to Portugal under Sir John Moore. The brigade consisted of the 18th and the king's German hussars, to which the 10th was afterwards added. It covered the advance of Hope's division upon Madrid and Salamanca in November, and afterwards covered the retreat of the whole army on Coruña. On 12 Dec. Stewart surprised a French post at Rueda and took eighty prisoners; and on the 28th he had a prominent part in the brilliant cavalry action at Benavente, the pickets being furnished by his regiment. ”

“ In dramatic literature alone, Mr. Fairweather's library was probably the fullest in the Dominion. Indeed his loss in this department is a positive loss to literature, and a collection such as he owned can never be again supplied. Many of the books are out of print, and cannot be purchased to-day at any price. The books lost in the city, on the day of the fire, will number many thousands of volumes. No city of the size of St. John could boast of finer private collections of books, anywhere. It will be many years before collections as rich, as unique, and as delightful can be procured again. ”

“ Captain Stewart was afterwards successively appointed to the Dart ship-sloop, and the Snap and Epervier brigs, stationed at the Leeward islands: his commission as a commander, bears date Feb. 15, 1808. We next find him commanding the Sheldrake of 10 guns, and proceeding, in company with the Tartar frigate, to the relief of Anholt, an island in the Cattegat, forming a very important point of communication between Great Britain and the continent,and then threatened with an attack by a formidable Danish force under the orders of Major Melsteat. ”

“ We have no desire to attempt to prove the contrary, but rather incline to the belief that the authorities are right, for we have it on the word of a gentleman who once owned a mineral rod, and whose word is undoubted, that a certain Miss Pitts, who was engaged all her life in digging about the gardens of her neighbours, and who never found anything up to the day of her death, confessed to him during her last illness, that her tongue had spoiled all. ”

“ STEWART, JOHN, Earl of Buchan (1381?–1424) , born about 1381, was the eldest son of the second marriage of Robert Stewart, first duke of Albany [q. v.] The first notice of him is in a grant made before 1399 to him and his younger brothers, Andrew and Robert, of the lands of Coull and O'Neil in Aberdeenshire (Exchequer Rolls, vol. iv. p. clxxxi) , and in later years, it is said, his valour obtained for him the popular epithet of ‘brave John O'Coul.’ He held only the rank of ‘squire’ in 1406, but on 20 Sept. ”

“ Second son of the late Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, Bart, of Blackball, Renfrewshire, N.B.
This officer served part of his time, as midshipman, under Lord Cochrane, in the Imperieuse frigate, and was in one of her boats at the attack of Arcasson, Jan. 7, 18O7. In the following year, he assisted at the destruction of several newly constructed semaphoric telegraphs, fourteen guard-houses, a battery, and a strong tower, on the southern coast of France [1] . He also served on shore, at the defence of Rosas, in Dec. 1808 [2] .
Mr. Stewart passed his examination, at Portsmouth, in July 1811 ”

“ He was born in 1667, of a high family noted for its loyalty to the family of Stewart. Receiving his earlier education in France, he was sent at the precocious age of ten to Trinity college, Cambridge, and was known as a university poet before he was twelve. ”

“ But on a night in January, with the thermometer five degrees above zero, and a fierce wind blowing out of illimitable blackness, life in the suburbs demanded strenuous will-power. Men put their heads down and ran in silence, with overcoats tightly buttoned, and hands beating together, their footsteps sounding heavily on the frozen earth.
The wind cut John Atterbury’s strong lungs like a knife, and his feet seemed to stumble against the cold as if it had been a visible barrier. ”

“ Mr. Stanton was a New Brunswick artist of fine taste and decided skill. Mr. Dole also saved some of his water-colours, notably those by Bell Smith and Frantz. The author lost an excellent drawing illustrating an idea in Thackeray, and a number of clever caricatures from the pencil of an amateur artist, Mr. Forbes Torrance, of Como, besides several engravings of merit, and a massive bronze figure representing Painting. Mr. Henry Vaughan lost his large costly painting from the John Miller collection, of Liverpool, England. Mr. James Stewart lost his whole collection of paintings ”

“ No sympathy could alleviate the suffering of the distracted husband, no words of man could take away the agony of his deep grief and sorrow. It pressed heavily upon his mind, and he was never again the same man. At this fire he lost his valuable library which contained many rare and costly books and manuscripts, together with the complete records of his parish.
He was succeeded by his son, Rev. John William D. Gray, D.D., a very able man. He was born in 1798, at Halifax, and graduated at King's College, Windsor. He became rector of Amherst, N.S., and in 1825, when Dr. ”

“ J. Castell Hopkins (Empire Club, Toronto) ; Miss Helen M. Merrill (Honorary Secretary, Brock Centenary, and U. E. L.) ; Miss C. Macdonell; Miss Kate Fraser, Toronto; Mr. John Stewart Carstairs, B.A. (Honorary Secretary, U. E. L. Association of Canada) ; Mr. Charles E. Macdonald, barrister, Toronto (Honorary Counsellor, U. E. L. Association of Canada) ; Chas. R. McCullough, Hamilton (Union of Canadian Clubs) .
Royal Canadian College, Kingston: Colonel J. H. V. Crowe, Commandant.
Royal Canadian Regiment: Captain J. F. Brown (in command) , Lieutenant J. W. Cox, and sixty-eight non-coms. and men. ”

“ Stewart, Jr., Druggist, held the other store, No. 32. The present owner of the building, Stephen Whittaker, of Fredericton, had lately begun the erection of a spacious rear addition, and improvements on a liberal scale had been commenced in the upper stories. The rest of the building was known as the Russell House. This building went to pieces about six o'clock. The photograph rooms were destroyed before Pine's building went, and the flames sped quickly, carrying before them the stores of Bardsley Bros., Scott & Binning, W. K. Crawford, Geo. ”

“ John's scourge, men failed to realize at once the magnitude of destruction which it caused. But those who had twice passed through the flames knew to their cost, and realized in an instant, what it was to be burned out a second time. Seven hundred persons from the burnt district of St. John's had taken up their residence in the suburban town. They were in most cases poor in a pecuniary sense, but their bands were strong, and their hearts were not downcast. The flames had carried away all their earthly possessions, and they found themselves the day after the fire comparatively penniless. ”

“ No more enterprising populace lives than the people of St. John. Many are used to hard work. They have hewn out of the solid rock one of the most beautiful cities in the Dominion. They have met a thousand obstacles in their path, and they have swept them all aside. And they will ride over their calamity and begin again the hard road upward. They will rebuild the city once more, and plant bright things where ruin and despair now stand, but we must not flatter ourselves that we have lost nothing, and that our land has not deteriorated in value. ”

“ Halifax has had her England, whose name will be remembered as long as ships sail the seas; and in St. John, we have long learned to bless the name of a hero in humble life, honest Tom Sloven. And now from the ashes of the fire two names arise, which in after years, when their owners shall have passed away, will live in the hearts of the people, and leave there an imperishable record. We applaud success, and oftentimes let honest effort and endeavour go unrewarded. We worship the rising sun, and when a man works hard to achieve a certain success and fails, we are apt to pass him by. ”

“ When Mr. Stewart called him to relieve the deck at four o’clock [6] , he had but just fallen asleep, and was much out of order; upon observing which Mr. Stewart strenuously advised him to abandon his intention. Soon after he had taken charge of the deck, he saw Mr. Hayward, the mate of his watch, He down on the arm-chest to take a nap; and finding that Mr. Hallet, the other Midshipman, did not make his appearance, he suddenly formed the resolution of seizing the ship. ”

“ To none except the most fanatical followers of the Lamb can it be anything else than a subject for regret that, instead of the works of Polybius, we have an account of the miracles that were worked by the many heads of John the Baptist that were possessed by different abbeys. ”

“ The enemy is therein stated to have been defeated with the loss of four gun-vessels, each mounting one long 24-pounder and 4 howitzers. On the 8th of the same month, Captain Stewart addressed an official letter to Captain Pater, of which the following is a copy:–
“I beg leave to inform you, that H.M. sloop under my command came up with the rear of the enemy’s gun-boats about six o’clock this morning, which we immediately brought to close action, and I am happy to say No. 2 and No. 5 struck to us: they each mount one long 24-pounder and one 32-pounder canonade, and are manned with 35 men each. ”

“ Captain Stewart was subsequently left as senior officer in the Archipelago, where he took three prizes, one of which was a xebec mounting six guns, and destroyed many small vessels; “but,” says he, in a letter from Malta, dated April 11th, 1808, “it seems labour in vain: we have a new way with the Turks. Our officers are ordered in every way to destroy and annoy their trade, but the Admiralty Courts are not directed to condemn ”

“ Mr. B. Lester Peters lost nearly all of his engravings, but succeeded in rescuing a study by F. W. Hulme, and a little gem by A. Vickers. Hon. George E. King saved a few water colours by eminent British artists, which he had. Mr. Donald G. MacKenzie, who had half-a-dozen striking oil paintings, recovered them all a few days after the fire. Mr. John Sears lost heavily in the Department of Art, but saved his one great picture, a portrait which is an undoubted Rubens, and one or two family likenesses. Mr. ”

“ Mr. Henry Wright died in 1829, and the house then fell into the occupancy of the late Wm. Wright, Advocate General, and John Boyd, M.D. Mr. Wilson was its lessee latterly, and it became an hotel under his management. It held a commanding position, and looked far out to sea. Strangers always paused to look up to the splendid front and defiant head, which reminded them of the old strongholds which render historic every inch of the old land across the blue water. And to-day, the ruins look even more picturesque and grand than the building did in its proudest days. ”

“ On the 6th Oct. following, one of the Dictator’s boats, under the command of Lieutenant Duell, captured a Danish lugger, manned with 13 men (including a commissioned officer) , 2 of whom were slain and 3 wounded. The British had not a man hurt.
Captain Stewart’s next appointment was May 5, 1813, to the Amphion frigate, on the North Sea station. ”

“ George Stewart came towards me, and asking the same question, I gave him a similar answer. But he said, ‘Don’t think of it; for, if you stay, you’ll incur an equal portion of guilt with the mutineers, though you’ve no hand in the mutiny – come down to the berth with me; let us get two or three necessaries, and go in the launch with the Captain.’ Churchill then turned to him, and said, ‘Why; Mr. Stewart, I thought you had been a man of more spirit:’ to whom he replied, ‘yes, Churchill, but I won’t bite off my nose to be revenged upon my face.’ I knowing Mr. ”