By Tom Perry
Major Alexander Stuart (1733-1823)
The smoke of the battle enveloped the landscape near Guilford Court House on March 15, 1781. A son watched his father and a wounded horse fall to the ground, pinning the rider underneath. Before he could assist his father, the green-coated cavalrymen of the man who claimed to have “killed more men and ravished more women than any man in America” during the American Revolution, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, captured him. Nearby, a soldier, Sam Houston, comforted the young son of Alexander Stuart. Family tradition holds that Major Alexander Stuart of the Virginia Militia so impressed his British captors with his courage during the battle and carriage afterward that they released him and returned his sword with their compliments.
With the premiere of Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Revolution, I thought some information on J. E. B. Stuart’s paternal great-grandfather, who fought in the American Revolution, was in order. William Letcher, Stuart’s maternal great-grandfather, lost his life in 1780, killed by a Tory, a pro-British sympathizer at Laurel Hill in Ararat, Patrick County, Virginia, during the American Revolution.
Born circa 1733 in Pennsylvania to Archibald and Janet Brown Stuart, Alexander Stuart came of age in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the years preceding the American Revolution. He married Robert and Ann Patterson’s daughter, Mary, and produced seven children. The oldest son, Archibald, lived a prominent life in the Commonwealth. He studied law under Thomas Jefferson and accompanied his father to Guilford Courthouse. His son Alexander H. H. Stuart carried on the family’s prominence in Virginia politics through the Civil War.
In 1766, Alexander Stuart married for the second time to Mary Moore Paxton, widow of Samuel Paxton. This marriage produced four children: Alexander (Grandfather of J. E. B. Stuart), James, Priscilla, and Benjamin. They lived in Rockbridge County, Virginia, near Brownsburg.
On the day of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, Greene placed 600 men in the brigade of Virginians under Brigadier General Edward Stevens on the left of Greene’s second battle line. Brigadier General Robert Lawson commanded another 600 men on the right of the second line. An ill Colonel Samuel McDowell passed command of his men to Major Alexander Stuart on the end of Steven’s left line.
During the attack by Tarleton, Houston wrote, “Major Stuart was wounded in this attack, taken prisoner. His son saw him fall, but could not help.” Another author summed up the engagement this way.
“Major Alexander Stuart…was mounted on a beautiful mare. A shot was fatal to her on the hasty retreat. As she fell, the Major was seized and surrendered. His captors plundered him and left him standing in his cocked hat, shirt, and shoes. He was unwounded. Cornwallis took him and other prisoners with him in his retreat to Wilmington. Mr. Stuart said the prisoners suffered severely, particularly from thirst. So great was the haste of flight, and the unkindness of the guard, that the prisoners, not suffered to attempt to drink, were warned by the bayonet point to go on. He dipped water with his cocked-hat, and others with their shoes.”
Alexander Stuart was one of 140 missing from Stevens’ Brigade. Family tradition holds that Major Stuart had two horses shot from under him during the battle with the latter pinning him to the ground, resulting in his capture.
After the battle, the British took many of the prisoners to the nearby Quaker settlement of New Garden, where the British left those too grievously wounded to move on March 18. The British marched the remainder of the captured Patriots to Wilmington and placed them on prison ships until they were exchanged. Known lists of prisoners from Guilford Courthouse do not list Alexander Stuart. The British may have left Stuart with the Friends, and he returned to Virginia. His service gained him land grants in Monroe, Giles, Mercer, and Tazewell counties of Virginia.
Major Alexander Stuart married for a third time to Ann Miller Reid in 1796. He lived until October 13, 1823. He worked with the Mount Pleasant Academy, which became Liberty Hall, the predecessor to Washington and Lee University. His grave is at the Old Hall Farm in Brownsburg, Rockbridge County, Virginia.
Tom Perry can be reached at freestateofpatrick@yahoo.com and the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace website is www.jebstuart.org.
