Born circa 1733 in Pennsylvania to Archibald “The Immigrant” and Janet Brown Stuart, Major 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. Besides J. E. B. Stuart, Alexander’s descendants were prominent in Virginia for many decades, leaving their mark in the “daughter of the stars,” the Shenandoah Valley.
The oldest son of Major Alexander Stuart was another Archibald (1757 – 1832), who lived a prominent life in the Commonwealth. He attended the College of William and Mary, studied law under Thomas Jefferson, and accompanied his father to Guilford Courthouse. Judge Archibald Stuart was a member of both houses of the General Assembly, delegate to the Convention of 1788, and judge of the General Court. Stuart and Jefferson exchanged nearly a hundred letters between the early 1780s and Jefferson’s death in 1826. Judge Archibald Stuart was born at Walnut Grove in Waynesboro, Virginia, and is buried in Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton beside his half-brother and J. E. B. Stuart’s grandfather, Judge Alexander Stuart. Judge Archibald’s home still stands in Staunton, Virginia, not too far from Stuart Hall, the Episcopal School for girls that was run by J. E. B. Stuart’s widow, Flora, after the Civil War.
Archibald and Eleanor Briscoe Stuart’s son, Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart, was born on April 2, 1807, in Staunton. “He was a member of the House of Delegates (1836–1839, 1873–1877) and the U.S. House of Representatives (1841–1843), secretary of the interior in the administration of Millard Fillmore (1850–1853), a member of the Senate of Virginia (1857–1861) and the Convention of 1861, and a principal member of the Committee of Nine, which negotiated with the federal government for an end to Reconstruction in Virginia in 1869. He studied law at the University of Virginia before going into politics. In the General Assembly and then in Congress, Stuart was a typical Whig, supporting internal improvements and moderating on slavery. After John Brown raided Harpers Ferry in 1859, he helped pen a government report condemning Northern abolitionist agitation. Stuart voted against secession in 1861 but signed the Ordinance of Secession. Stuart did not serve in government or the military during the American Civil War (1861–1865), but in 1867, amidst controversy over a new state constitution, he helped to form the Conservative Party. He and eight other men, the so-called Committee of Nine, successfully negotiated a plan with the federal government to present an acceptable constitution to Virginia voters and so end Reconstruction in the state. He also served as rector of the University of Virginia (1876–1882, 1886–1887) and president of the Virginia Historical Society (1881–1891). He died in 1891.”
Major Alexander Stuart married for the second time in 1766 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.
At the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, Alexander Stuart was one of 140 missing from Stevens’ Virginia 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 capture, and that Lord Cornwallis, commander of the British army, returned his sword and released him due to his bravery in battle. There is no doubt of Stuart’s courage, but this story sounds apocryphal through the prism of his famous great-grandson’s exploits, Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart. This author believes Stuart’s capture occurred in Greensboro Country Park, near Forest Lawn Cemetery, adjacent to Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Alexander Stuart’s role in the battle was covered in an article last year.
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 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, ten years before his future famous great-grandson, James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, was born in Patrick County. Alexander Stuart worked with the Mount Pleasant Academy, which became Liberty Hall, the predecessor to Washington and Lee University. It is appropriate that a school associated with Robert E. Lee, in a town dominated by the spirit of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, had an ancestor of J. E. B. Stuart at its founding. Major Alexander Stuart is buried at the Old Hall Farm, near Brownsburg, in Rockbridge County, Virginia.
