Born on May 11, 1770, in Augusta County, Virginia, Alexander Stuart was the son of Mary Moore Paxton Stuart and Major Alexander Stuart. The oldest son from the second marriage did not inherit his father’s estate. It went to Archibald Stuart, the eldest son of Major Stuart and father of Alexander H. H. Stuart. Alexander Stuart studied the law under his half-brother, Archibald, which began a long career that led him across the Mississippi River to Missouri.
Alexander Stuart married first, Anne Dabney, the daughter of Captain George Dabney and Elizabeth Price of Hanover County. Elizabeth descended from the prominent Randolph family of Virginia, which connected the Stuarts to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Robert E. Lee. The marriage resulted in two children: Archibald Stuart, the father of J. E. B. Stuart, and Anne Dabney Stuart, who married William McDowell and then James Ewell Brown, the uncle for whom General J. E. B. Stuart received his name.
After Anne’s death, Stuart married Mary “Polly” Gassaway of Maryland on June 26, 1800. The third wife, Jane Johnson, was the sister of Chapman Johnson and mother of Doctor Chapman Johnson Stuart. Alexander Stuart lived in Campbell and Cumberland counties in Virginia and later in Richmond, serving in the Executive Council of Virginia.
Records show Alexander Stuart practicing law in Kaskaskia, in present day Illinois, by 1806. In 1807, Stuart owned a slave in the Indiana Territory. A law passed in the Indiana Territory required those enslaved people over the age of 40 to become indentured servants. On February 25, 1812, in Randolph County, Stuart assigned title to an indentured Negro, Adam, for twenty years of service.
On February 3, 1809, the United States Congress organized the Illinois Territory with Alexander Stuart serving as one of three territorial judges. Stuart began a career serving on the state and federal levels of the judiciary in the Illinois and Missouri territories and later in the states. On July 17, 1809, Governor Edwards of Illinois took the oath of office before Judge Stuart. On July 9, 1813, Alexander Stuart resigned as judge, but returned on February 9, 1814. President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe commissioned Stuart as a United States Judge. Territorial records listed Judge Stuart as being double paid in Illinois and Missouri on April 27, 1814. On April 3, 1816, Governor William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) of Missouri granted a pardon on the advice of Alexander Stuart.
On May 22, 1816, Stuart purchased an entire city block in downtown Saint Louis bordered by Walnut, Market, 5th and 6th Streets, the present site of the Marriott Hotel near Busch Stadium, where my father’s favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, play ball. In 1820, the diary of Stephen Hempstead, who lived near the present location of Bellefontaine Cemetery in Saint Louis, reported twice that Judge Stuart “stopped the night at my house.”
Judge Alexander Stuart is in many Missouri records. On December 12, 1817, Judge Stuart was serving as a Judge of the General Court in St. Clair County, Illinois. On February 2, 1818, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams recommended the renewal of the commission of Stuart as United States Judge. The following month, Stuart received his commission, signed by President James Monroe, at an annual salary of $1,500. A few weeks later, on February 24, 1818, the inhabitants, including Alexander Stuart of St. Ferdinand in St. Louis County, Missouri, requested a post office.
On August 10, 1820, Stuart resigned his U. S. Judgeship to seek a seat in the Missouri legislature. The Lucas family reported in 1822 that they had successfully campaigned against Stuart. Among their comments is this quote from William to John B. C. Lucas, “Stuart will have a majority in three or four of the counties on the western extremity of the state that he has lost all he had gained in Howard County during his electioneering expedition.” In 1821, the United States admitted Missouri as a slave state after Congress reached a compromise admitting Maine as a free state. Judge Alexander Stuart witnessed the birth of a granddaughter on July 20, 1821, when Mary Tucker Stuart, the daughter of Archibald and Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart and sister of General Stuart, was born during a visit to Missouri.
In 1823, Governor McNair of Missouri appointed Stuart Circuit Court Judge in St. Louis. Stuart succeeded Nathaniel B. Tucker, who returned to Virginia and became a law professor at Washington College. Stuart served until 1826. On November 22, 1826, 150 miles up the Missouri River, Stuart roomed with William C. Carr and four others. A few days later, Carr, after meeting someone from the Bluegrass state, wrote, “no Kentuckian will willingly be less than a Major.”
Alexander Stuart began representing St. Louis County in the Missouri Legislature during 1826. William Carr succeeded him to the judgeship. William Lucas reported on November 27, 1826, “Judge Stuart is speaker of the lower house.” In 1830, Stuart was living on a farm in Bellefontaine, St. Ferdinand, in St. Louis County.
Judge Alexander Stuart returned to the Shenandoah Valley of his youth after crossing the continent from the waters of the wide Missouri River. He died on December 9, 1832, in Staunton, Virginia, during a visit home. Two months later, his grandson, James Ewell Brown Stuart, was born in Patrick County to Archibald and Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart on the Laurel Hill Farm.
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