| Notes |
- From FindAGrave:
Obituary of Homer Stuart, from The Lockport Journal, October 8, 1885:
Homer H. Stuart, Esq.
The New York Times of October 6th, publishes the following notice of the death of Mr. Stuart, who formerly resided in Lockport, and who commenced the practice of his profession here. He studied law with Robert H. Stevens, Esq, and then submitted to the bar or soon after, formed a partnership with Billings P. Learned, which firm continued in business here for several years. Mr. Stuart was well-known as an able lawyer, and was prominent professionally, and as a citizen in this community. He was an accomplished scholar and possessed more than ordinary ability as a literary man. Many of the articles written by him for the magazines of that day were of a high order and attracted general attention.
Among his contributions to the press while here was a defense of James Fenimore Cooper against certain political attacks made on that distinguished novelist and writer by the whigs. It was anonymous, and written with such consummate ability that it arrested the attention of Mr. Cooper, who was so impressed with its power and effectiveness that he addressed a letter of thanks to the writer as soon as he ascertained from the publisher the name of its author.
His humorous sketches of the "Patriot War" on our western frontier in 1837 and 1838 and graphic descriptions of some of its ludicrous phases, were extensively read and enjoyed.
The statement in the Times that Mr. Stuart removed from Cattaraugus county and was admitted to the bar there, is erroneous. After the dissolution of the law firm mentioned, he removed from this place to New York, where he immediately opened an office and has been engaged in business ever since. Although long absent, he is still remembered by many in this city, who will hear the intelligence of his sudden death with sorrow and sincerely lament that they will meet this gifted man on earth no more.
Obituary of Homer Stuart, from the New York Times, October 6, 1885:
Homer H. Stuart, a lawyer, aged 75 years, died of heart disease at No. 63 Wall-street, yesterday, soon after 1 o'clock P.M. Usually in the possession of robust health Mr. Stuart complained of feeling unwell immediately after breakfast yesterday. He said that there were severe pains in his chest. He went to his law office, which is on the fourth floor of No. 63 Wall-street. From there he went to court and had several cases that were on the calendar adjourned because he did not feel able to attend to them. Subsequently he returned to his office and told his partner, who is his son Inglis, that he was going home. That was about 1 o'clock. He expired suddenly in the hallway just as he was leaving the building.
Mr. Stuart has been known to New-Yorkers for at least 40 years. He was born in Vermont and from there removed to Cattaraugus County, this State, where he was admitted to the Bar. Soon after he became a lawyer he established an office in this vicinity. He was Corporation Council of Williamsburg until that city was merged into the city of Brooklyn, in 1855. After the war Mr. Stuart was elected President of that company until it was consolidated with other companies and merged into the American Bank Note Company. For a few years Mr. Stuart was a resident of Washington. In 1877 he resumed the practice of law. forming a copartnership with Charles E. Whitehead. The firm of Whitehead & Stuart continued in business at No. 61 Wall-street until 1882. It was extensively interested in litigation against the elevated railroads. Early in 1884 Inglis Stuart was admitted to the Bar, and his father entered into partnership with him, taking an office at No. 63 Wall-street.
Mr. Stuart had a country residence at Coxsackie-on-the Hudson, and when in the city he resided at No. 23 West Tenth-street. He was an attendent at the Brick (Presbyterian) Church. His widow, two sons,and a married daughter survive him.
Homer may have attended the 1860 Republican convention at which Abraham Lincoln was nominated for President (Correspondence of Philip B. Stewart II, 6 Sabal Ct., Sewall's Point, Stuart, FL, 1/27/1990). Homer changed the spelling of his surname from "Stewart." Letter from Philip Stewart, 6 Sabal Ct., Sewall's Pt., Stuart, Fl. dated 1/27/1990 states that "the first Stewart to come to America, Proprietor John Stewart, occasionally used the "u" spelling & I believe that is the reason Homer adopted it."
Obituary, New York Daily Tribune, October 6, 1885:
Homer H. Stuart died suddenly yesterday afternoon in his office, no. 63 Wall-st. He was born in Vermont seventy-five years ago. After being graduated from Middlebury College he settled in the western part of this State. He became prominent in politics as a Democrat, but soon after the formation of the "Free Soil" party, became one of its followers, and subsequently a Republican in the early history of that party. He was an enthhusiastic worker for the party, but invariably declined political office, and refused an election to the Union League Club of this city. Since the war he took little active interest in politics. In 1868 he was elected president of the Continental Bank Note Company, which was later consolidated with the American Bank Note Company. Of recent years he lived in Coxsackie. He was a partner with Charles E. Whitehead. A son Inglis Stuart, is also a lawyer at no. 63 Wall-st., and lives at no. 23 West Tenth-st.
The following details on Homer are annexed to his book "The Soul" published N.Y., 1879:
Homer H. Stuart's given names were derived as follows: Homer Hine, the son of Noble Hine and Patience Hubbell, was born July 25, 1776, and died at Youngstown, Ohio, in 1856. He was a cousin of Aaron Stewart. Aaron Stewart in compliment to his cousin named his elder son Homer Hine Stewart. It will be observed that the surname is spelled two ways. The subject of this memoir after attaining his majority reverted to "Stuart" as written by the earlier generations of his family. In this form it appeared in the Will of his ancestor, John Stuart, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1682, and died in Londonderry, N.H. April 3rd, 1741.
Homer Hine Stuart was born April 1, 1810, in New Haven, Vt. He remarked that the only recollection he had of his father (Aaron Stewart) was sitting on the knee of a tall man and playing with the large buttons on his army coat. Once he recalled this incident to his mother and she responded that his father was then bidding her good-bye ere departing to the War of 1812, where he laid down his life. Referring to a letter, dated New Haven, Vt., we may locate the episode as having happened about March 11, 1813. In the latter part of this year, Aaron's widow, Mrs. Selinda Stewart, went to Fayston, Vt., and resided with her father, John Colt, who was born in Lyme, Connecticut, and who after the War of the Revolution removed to Vermont.
Homer's early childhood was passed in Fayston and the spot always remained distinct in his recollection. It was a township lying amid a tangle of domes and peaks, near Camel's Hump at the head waters of Mad River, which flows northward into the Winooski. It was a region of surpassing beauty. Bears and wolves lurked within the forest lying above the clearings made by its farmers. Except in winter these animals seldom gave trouble. He related that one cold moonlit night the household was aroused by squeals from the pigpen. Before his grandfather Colt could get out of doors with his musket, a bear was seen silhouetted against the snowy hillside dragging a luster porker. Another time Homer was sitting on a fallen tree picking raspberries and looked up to see a great black bear at the other end of the tree likewise picking raspberries! In the brook beside the house he amused himself making dams and placing upon the water wheels whittled out for him by his uncle, Charles Bulkeley Colt. Water from this brook was conducted to the kitchen where it flowed through a huge trough holding captive a lot of trout. It was customary to scoop a batch of these fish, when a guest happened along unexpectedly, and serve them fried with pieces of salt pork. Next day Homer would be sent out with pole and line and pail to capture another supply to place in the trough and this attractive task was readily performed; for trout in those days fairly longed to take a hook. In a log school-house he learned his letters and he remarked that "1818" was the first date he remembered writing on his slate. From descriptions which have come down from his mother, he was then a sturdy freckled brown-eyed boy with tow hair, "homely", as she phrased it. He grew, however, strikingly handsome. Indeed during his later years his appearance was the subject of remark wherever he went. He himself, however, he had a trace of vanity.
When the statue of the "Typical Puritan" was being designed in 1881, Augustus St. Gaudens, the sculptor, was desirous he should pose. Not knowing Mr. Stuart personally, he sought out Roswell Smith, the founder of the Century Magazine and asked his good offices in the matter of inducing Mr. Stuart to pose. Smith broached the proposition of St. Gaundns, Mr. Stuart, taken by surprise, colored like a child. It is to be regretted exceedingly that his modesty caused him to deny, not only this, but similar requests of many other artists, and we have merely a reproduction of a photograph which fails entirely in portraying the complexion, fresh as the blossom of a hawthorn, the kindly brown eyes and the beautiful silvery hair.
John Stewart decided in 1819 that his grandson Homer should have a liberal education and summoned him to Middlebury to attend school. Here he passed the next few years. In 1828 he entered Middlebury College, teaching schools at intervals near Ticonderoga and Lake George and Warren, Vt. He ranked high in his class and his graduation address in 1832 was very creditable. He studied law at Windsor, Vt., where a few years later his acquaintance with William M. Everts began. During a portion of his period he taught school at Springfield, Vt., for from the time of graduation at Middlebury College, he was dependent upon his own efforts. These early years were toilsome and marked by self-denial and bred in him the habits of thoroughness which characterized his after life. Finally he started for New York, via Troy. En route he saw a railroad for the first time and enjoyed the novelty of a ride in one of the stage coach bodies which had been mounted on car wheels and attached to the primitive "Low commotive Engine," as one of his New England contemporaries pronounced the word in the dawn of American Railroading. The line then extended from Albany to Schenectady and can be considered as one of the pioneer railroads.
He made his home for awhile at 57 John Street with David Hale, a friend of his Uncle Ira Stewart. Afterwards he roomed at 41 Liberty Street with Egbert Starr and Henry Warren, two men of his age, from Vermont.
His stay in New York lasted some time, and in his leisure hours he rambled about the city which was to claim so much of his life. He found the houses rather scattering north of Houston Street. Washington Square was a field surrounded by a picket fence. Beyond the "Parade Ground," as the Square was termed, came ordinary farming country. His evening hours were apt to be passed on the Battery, for he had a fine ear for music and loved to hear the melodies floating from "Castle Garden" out over the water. In those days the "Elysian Fields" at Hoboken, where he was wont to stroll deserved the name and were not, as now, merged in steamship yards. There was also the "Pavilion" on Staten Island where he used to sit and review the procession of vessels as they passed.
While in New York and opportunity to teach school in Richmond, Va., presented itself and he accepted. The journey southward carried him through Philadelphia and Baltimore. The Baltimore and Ohio railroad was being extended toward Point of Rocks on the Potomac River and he rode in the cars to Relay House Station.
The allusion to this railroad warrants a few remarks concerning its appearance at this early period. The Baltimore and Ohio embodied at the date of inception in 1827 the boldest effort in railroad construction. Even when completed by its far-seeing projectors, Fridge, Brown, and Steuart, to the Ohio River in 1853 it was still the longest continuity of rails operated under one charter in this or in any other country. Yet, when Mr. Stuart first rode upon it in 1833, the larger part of its motive power was supplied by the horse.
Two methods were utilized in applying horse power. By the first method, the horses moved on a horse path and pulled a cable attached to the forward car. This was "canalling."
The second method was different. Here the horse was stationed upon the forward car of the "brigade" as trains were then termed, and stood upon a wide belt passing over a drum. The drum was geared to the axle of the wheels, and, when the horse moved, the motion was communicated in accelerated degree to the wheels. When the "engineer" (if the driver can be so termed) received the signal to start he drew forward the brake handle (just as the engineer draws out the throttle of the locomotive) and Dobbin feeling the tread-mill slipping, began stepping onward, thus propelling the train of coach-like bodies. A surprising pageant indeed, one of these "brigades" filled with farmers and their wives, and the medley composing the passenger list, gliding apace along rails laid on granite sleepers while tantaras from the engineer's horn evoked echoes on those pleasant fields of Maryland.
Three steam locomotives only where then in service. They were named "York," "Atlantic," and "Franklin" and the empirical arrangement of their construction was due to theories soon to be discarded. Their boilers were upright and likewise their cylinders. Their piston rods alternately pushed up and pulled down walking beams connected with the diminutive driving wheels and the action of these walking beams reminded beholders of the kicking motion of a grasshopper's hind legs. From this appearance they derived their name "Grasshopper Locomotives."
How little Mr. Stuart, while riding the first time on the B. & O. realized that long, long afterward he would meet and come to know the man who had demonstrated in 1829 that this railroad could and must be operated by the "Steam Horse." That man was the noble Peter Cooper and his successful demonstration was made by the tiny locomotive which he himself constructed and ran from Baltimore through Relay to Ellicott's Mills.
Once in after years when the train flashed by Relay, Mr. Stuart pointed it out to his son who was making his initial visit to Washington, and alluded to those beginnings of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Ah! The years were roiled away! He recalled the place as revealed when the "brigade" emerged from the deep cutting that morn, years before this latter time, and in the distance the station was in view. In fancy came the mellow cadence of the "engineer's" horn, postilion like, warning all concerned to make ready for transition. There was Relay once again! But fallen from its erstwhile estate of importance into the desuetude foredoomed to every work of man. Gone that ample platform thronged with travellers! Gone those granite sleepers! The Stone Age in Railroading! Gone the curious iron rails - archaic vehicles and motive power, manners, methods, one and all tentative - having served the day and generation! Ever "the old order changeth and yieldeth place to new!"
From Relay the stage coach conveyed him toward Washington, past that bloody field of Bladensburg. There, just outside the limits of the District of Columbia, was fought one of the battles of the Second War with England, and the capture of our National Capital by the British army ensued. But aside from this event the spot deserves the title "bloody" for upon this Gretna Green many "affairs of honor" had taken place conducted under the etiquette of the Code Duello. Hither came the duelists from Washington. Here the intrepid Decatur, scarce a dozen years earlier, had gone down before the aim of Barron and an untimely end had marked the career of the author of the sentiment-
"Our Country! Always right!
But right or wrong, our Country!"
Other combats on this field of Bladensburg recurred to him as the stage coach progressed toward the Southland and set him to musing on the condition of society, which made the declination of a challenge an exercise of higher moral courage than the acceptance. Thus it was with Decatur who disapproved of the Code and yet ever yielded to its demands, fearing public opinion would regard his known bravery as having weakened with advancing years. The sentiments expressed in the correspondence of these duelists are so mawkish that we wonder how men of sincerity could have entertained them. Whatever glamour may have once invested the duel, disappeared forever when an Illinois jury convicted the successful duelist of murder in the first degree and the sheriff hanged him.
As Mr. Stuart rode through the National Capital, little was he aware that he would be there three decades later during intensely stirring times! The Washington spread before him in the 30's was an unattractive village, straggling around a few great public edifices, the strongest possible contrast to the Washington he visited in 1883 for the last time, and for which he held the greatest admiration.
The Richmond school proved uncongenial and the scholars turbulent - during the very first week one of the school boys stabbed a fellow scholar! At the house on Shockoe Hill, where Mr. Stuart boarded, the fare was "hog and hominy and hoe cake." Richmond itself, however, impressed him. It was "half city and half country," beautifully situated, and though containing only twelve thousand inhabitants, extended widely. He considered the State House a majestic building despite its plainness. He noted in its atrium a statue of George Washington so unlike the models with which he was familiar that it did not please him. On the pedestal was inscribed, "Fait par Goudon citoyen Francais, 1798." N this inscription he saw the hand of Jefferson who was, he remarked, "three-quarters French and one-quarter American."
Relinquishing Richmond he took passage on the schooner "Wasp," S. H. Worth, Captain, for New York. The craft moved leisurely down the James River from "The Rocketts" anchoring at intervals and giving opportunity to study the plantations of "Tidewater Virginia." "Swallow Barn" so delightfully portrayed in 1833 by John P. Kennedy, and "The Old Plantation" located on the Lower Chesapeake Shore of Maryland, described in James Hungerford's narrative, dated in 1832, were counterparts of those which Mr. Stuart observed from the deck of the schooner. For a better view he climbed the mast-head of the "Wasp" as it glided past the one house and half-dozen tall ghost-like chimneys which constituted the sole relics of Jamestown, and the desolate appearance of this historic spot left a mournful recollection. He held in pleasant memory an anchorage at Hampton Roads where he and Captain Worth put in an open boat for a day's duck shooting. This reconnaissance on the James River and Chesapeake Bay was of avail to him thirty years later when tracing on the map the engagement between the "Monitor" and the "Merrimack" and the marching and countermarching of the two armies in the War of the Rebellion for the shores of the James and of the Chesapeake were distinctly recalled.
At last weathering Cape Henry the "Wasp" turned her prow for Sandy Hook and after a voyage that was very stormy, glided into New York Harbor.
He filled a place as clerk with Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor, 60 Wall Street. It was a firm in an extensive way of business principally in cotton factorage and one of its adjuncts was a forge shop or foundry at Paterson, N.J., where in short time Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor were to commence the manufacture of locomotives. As late as 1878 one of these old locomotives was pointed out by Mr. Stuart at the Grand Central Station and he called attention to the brass letters "R. K. & G." on the steam-chest. Under the title of "Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works," which the concern assumed after the death of Thomas Rogers in 1856, the establishment became known the world over.
Mr. Stuart's duties were simple. A task at which he was set by his employers was labelling and filing business letters. Then he was directed to meet nearly all the incoming ships. Making inquiry of one captain, the latter presented in answer his log book written in Norwegian! Boarding another vessel brought him in contact with the commander, a Frenchman of infinite gesticulation, and the palaver was finally adjourned to the shore to take "Conseil" as the captain expressed it.
His desk at the Rogers, Ketchum * Grosvenor office was surrounded with samples of cotton, while a throng of Southern cotton growers and cotton speculators crowded about these samples. To him, a newcomer, the disjointed phrases coming from this hib-bub of voices, such as "How is Sea Islands," "What does Liverpool say," "Long Staple," etcetera, sounded very strangely. Yet to his surprise he found that his employer, keen-sighted broker though he was, possessed an exquisite sense of poetry for which he had a great fondness. The merchants of Wall Street in the days of "Auld lang syne," he perceived were men of liberal education and noted that they transacted their business with military prompitude and energy.
At two o'clock his duties took him over to the "Exchange" on Wall Street not far from the office. At that hour gathered those whose business required personal attendance, and this gathering embraced practically all the merchants of the city.
He studied this daily assemblage at the Exchange with deep interest. Some stood in groups, some in pairs. Many were well-dressed gentlemen bearing themselves with easy grace, but, whether well dressed or the reverse, all were on business intent - not a lounger among them. The figures and countenances varied. Here a figure lean as Shylock. Over there a plethoric Dutchman talking to a companion with the unmistakable mahogany tinted countenance of the East Indian. Quakers, Spaniards, Yankees -- all these types were brought together in this throng and fell under his observant eye. A diverting forum indeed for one who aimed to enter the legal profession!
Is mercantile career was brief. Through the kindly efforts of Mr. Morris Ketchum he was translated from the babel of the counting room to the upstairs quietude of the law office of William Emerson, brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Mr. Stuart used to relate that Ralph Waldo Emerson and his brother William, tilting their chairs and projecting their feet over the window sill into Wall Street, would talk hour after hour. Seated a few feet away, he could not avoid hearing their conversation on those lines which, designated usually Transcendentalism, have become famous. Nearly fifty years later he smilingly admitted to the intimate friend and admirer of Emerson, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, that in 1833 these lines of conversation did not appeal to him. "I simply could not grasp them," he said.
They had not acquired that epigrammatic crystallization which forms so great a charm in Emerson's writing and stamps him the Umpire Philosopher. That very crystallization when it came, as finally it did, appealed to him with force, as for instance the following quotations which he pencil-marked one summer afternoon while reading Miss Woolson's novel "Anne," where they appeared as chapter headings:
"Manners - not what but how. Manners are happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love -- now repeated and hardened into usage. Manners required time; nothing is more vulgar than haste."
"In our society there is a standing antagonism between the conservative and the democratic classes; between the interest of dead labor; that is the labor of hands long ago still in the grave; which labor is now entombed in money, stocks and land owned by idle capitalists, and the interests of living labor, which seeks to possess itself of them."
"We accompany the youth with sympathy and manifold old sayings of the wise to the gate of the arena, but it is certain that not by strength of ours or by the old sayings but only on the strength of his own, unknown to us or to any, he must stand or fall."
The Rev. Peter Bulkeley of Concord and Charles Chauncey, President of Harvard College, were ancestors of both Mr. Stuart and Mr. Emerson. The fact, however, was not known to either at the time of this meeting. Mutual knowledge that tie of kinship existed would have led to more sympathetic acquaintance and thereby doubtless then would have given Mr. Stuart that comprehension of Emerson's greatness of intellect; for Mr. Stuart, at least in later years, was an unerring critic of a man's mental ability.
His environment in Vermont had not qualified Mr. Stuart for this meeting with Emerson. Quite the contrary. He had been brought up to measure men by the inflexible standard that had come through the Revolutionary period from an earlier era.
Captain John Stewart, his grandfather - a rugged veteran of the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary Wars - did not move in line with the trend of philosophic thought which had its starting point in Massachusetts. Aaron Stewart gave evidence of departure from the early standard of Vermont, doubtless owing to the Puritan strain derived from his mother, Huldah Hubbell Stewart, for the Hubbels were distinctly of that Puritan type which came in the Winthrop company in 1630 and which Oliver Wendell Holmes has termed the Brahmin Caste of New England. Homer, however, had not come under the influence of his father, but had been swayed by the precepts of his deeply loved and respected grandsire. Therefore the canons of his earlier years as applied to men and modes of thought were destined ere long to be supplanted with the measurement decreed by the catholicity which was his Bulkeley-Chauncey heritage. That the earlier views were overthrown is not surprising.
Wafted from the past floats the aura of one's forebears. We are trustees for the oncoming generations. Long ago the trust was stamped and induction into the trust is ruled by unknown laws of heredity which claim at wide intervals the individual best fitted to administer the trust with fidelity. Such individual cannot choose but serve, albeit subconsciously. With these conditions in view the outcome of the conflict could have been forseen. The question was merely the length of time required to give that maturity which should qualify him keenly to appreciate Emerson. Observation of humanity and profound reflection were to train him while ripening into his maturity. The training was to be on a frontier arena confronting able antagonists - training, drilling him to think with utmost clearness, and to utter his thought with beautiful precision, training inculcating quick sympathy for the poor and lowly, without regard to color, creed, or race.
What would have been the career of this versatile thinker if his formative years had been passed in the historic galaxy of "Brook Farm: contemporaries? He was intellectually their equal. His capacity for enjoyment of such companionship was of the highest degree. To have communed with Hawthorne would have been a joy to both.
How similar the inclination of mind of these two! Take the following written in 1829 when Mr. Stuart was nineteen. How similar to many of the musings by Hawthorne in his Note Book!
Saturday Night, Nov. 1st
"It is a cold, dreary November night. The rain and hail are pattering against my windows and the wind is whistling, moaning and roaring among the huge chimneys of the college. Lights can be seen in the village through the storm and everything has that cheerless aspect so much better felt than described. Yet I am always happier at such a time than any other. There is a nameless and peculiar pleasure in looking forth upon the low grey clouds and the dull desolate storm of November and a kind of excitement in walking through it in a dark evening (if well wrapped up). It seems as if it was emblematic of the life of man - begun in smiles and sunshine and ended in tears and darkness.
In an evening like this how supremely content a person feels to be situated as I am now with a warm fire, a snug room with books and a pipe on a table before me, a dish of chocolate on the fire and alone! It seems as if you were far separated from the bustle and noise of the world and had retired within yourself and dependent upon no one but yourself for your enjoyment. By the way, I intend that Dan shall take a cup with me. A person in college always has a circle of friends with whom he enjoys himself much. I spend some of my happiest moments in talking with my chum or with Seymour. Last night Seymour any myself sat over the embers in this room till 12:00 talking to each other of old times, school days, &c. And time slips fast when so employed. I'm half the time in this room or he is in mine and our thoughts in many respects are similar. But he had the advantage of me in a fine form and graceful carriage. And my chum is the handsomest young fellow I ever saw and notwithstanding that he has a very sound mind and no vanity."
Take another example, where the mood is sadder, written while teaching school the following year:
Warren, Vt., March 9th, 1830
"What a curious effect music has! It is the richest and purest pleasure and gives birth to feelings which an angel might envy. It is a kind of melancholy happiness, a saddened joy that is infinitely superior to all the gratifications of noisy mirth. At such a moment the tired soul rests from all her cares, from ambition and hate, from pride and from all those dark feelings and passions which mark the alloy of our nature and the connexion of soul and matter. I have been listening for some minutes past to the song called "Blue-eyed Mary." The words themselves are pensive and touching and when warbled with taste by a pretty girl it is difficult to believe that the "blue-eyed Stranger" is not breathing forth her blighted hopes and her desolate heart. We are made of clay I know, but once in a while a train of feelings will come across the dull currents of our hearts that belong to a better world than this and cause us like the Peri that had caught a glimpse of Heaven to turn back a saddened and reluctant eye upon our own condition."
How keen the appreciation of Natural Phenomenon in the following:
December 11th, 1830, Bridport.
"Ten o'clock. The Northern Lights are more brilliant than ever I saw them before. The whole heaven is filled with them and they form at the zenith an apex that surpasses in grandeur and beauty anything the imagination can conceive of. Slender lines of delicate white diverge from the horizon and meet at a point like the converged rays of the sun producing a focus of light sufficiently strong to read by. But strange as it may seem, the stars can be seen through it. It reminds one of Ossian's description of the spirit of Loda:
"The wan star twinkled through his form."
It is not difficult to fancy that you see in the heavens mighty armies contending with each other; banners fluttering and streaming over them and, in fine 'all the pride and pomp and circumstance of war." And it has an unnatural appearance that cannot be described. I will pardon the rude Indian when he gazed upon them or the beleaguered inhabitants of Jerusalem for believing that they saw in these borealean phenomena the portentous announcement of divine of divine wrath and the precoursers of their city's destruction.
I should have no difficulty in imagining that I saw in the sky a flaming sword like that which is said to have hung over Jerusalem. I could myself see the Roman and Judean bands contending together; I could see the broken squadrons; the rushing charge of the cavalry; the confused rout and all the current of headlong flight. And if I had lived eighteen centuries ago I might have trembled; as it was I felt a pleasing but sublime awe like that produced by the roll of distant thunder. Although we have not the rich fruits and exuberant fertility of the tropics yet there is beauty in the northern sky compared with which all the splendour of a Southern Night would be tame and vapid. This equal distribution of natural flavours marks the beneficence of the Great First Cause and is well calculated to produce at least a momentary feeling of gratitude. There is no need of revelation to teach us that there is a God. Everything proclaims it from the tiny denizens of the grass to the rolling spheres-
"Forever singing as they shine,
The hand that formed us is divine."
His intercourse with Nature was not less intimate than Thoreau's. How he and Thoreau would have fraternized upon the expedition which is narrated as follows:
Middlebury College, No. 47, Sept 2, 1829
"I have had a regular tramp since last I was seated at my old table and have seen enough of woods and mountains, rocks and streams to satisfy any person that has as Leather Stocking says no cross I blood. The Monday after commencement John Hooker and myself started to have a walk among the mountains and to view the country. We stayed in Starsboro' the first night at the house of a Quaker and rioted on fried pork and potatoes at the rate of 25 cents for supper, lodging and breakfast. The old Quaker sat with his hand in his vest and told long droning stories of the hardships which the first settlers endured; how the wolves would howl at his door and the bears would carry off his hogs, &c., &c. The next day we walked 18 miles through a region where there was scarcely a footpath and crossed a high mountain, one of the chain of mountains which run through the State. Part of our walk was a footpath by the side of a fine trout stream that wound its way through the woods, now brawling over the stones of glancing down in mimic waterfalls and again gliding along in a still deep channel as clear as a spring. Every few rods up started a flock of partridges whirling away with a roar into the woods. Our path led across mountain streams which we crossed by trees bridging the gulf, sometimes at the height of 20 feet from the water. These trees would swing and teter as we passed over them in a manner not very agreeable. We reached my mother's house about 3 o'clock Tuesday and I spent that and the next day in talking with her and looking at the bees. Thursday a party of eleven went to the top of "Camel's Hump" and we were as wild looking a company as ever I saw. We had packs and some carried guns and every man had at least three dogs. We had to walk eight miles to get to the mountain. The whole of the way was through woods and over mountains which I should call high, if I had never been on the "Hump." Our guides who were accustomed to traveling in the woods hurried on like wolves and the fatigue to me was almost unsupportable. The forest was so dense that we could not see out at all and our guides were forced to climb trees to see in what direction the mountain lay. I saw one of them climb a tall spruce till he was at least 80 feet from the ground and the trunk at that height was not larger than my arm. It made my head swim to look at him and it would have made a bear's to follow him. At last we reached the top of the mountain after an almost perpendicular ascent. This peak according to the measurement of Captain Partridge is 4186 feet above the level of tide water and Mansfield North Mountain or Peak called the "Chin" is 4279 feet, not quite a hundred feet higher than the "Hump." Mansfield "Chin" is the highest in the State. We had one of the finest prospects in the world. Al the Northern and Middle part of Vermont; Lake Champlain from Ticonderoga to St. John's; the White Hills in New Hampshire and a part of Canada lay spread out below us like a map. It was a most glorious prospect! Camel's Hump is singularly formed; the top of it is a vast rock plateau on the top of a high mountain. This rock on the south side descends perpendicularly 150 or 200 feet. To go within two or three yards of the edge and look down will make a person feel peculiar. I scarcely dared send over a stone lest I should fall off with it. Everything below us seemed nearly level. I noticed one thing which appeared very singular. The land seemed to ascend the farther distant it was or in other words, we stood at the bottom of a vast concavity and it seemed as if Lake Cham. Would immediately flow down to the foot of the mountain as if its banks were broken; this was probably owning to a refraction of the air or to some other cause which could be explained on philosophic principles. Below the precipice on the south side of the mountain is a vast forest that extends a number of miles to the East, South and West; a forest that has never felt the axe and still stands in the same gloomy silence in which it has remained since the Creation. I stood on a point of rock above the precipice when the setting sun was sending the shadow of the mountain far to the eastward and touching with an almost unearthy hue the sombre forests below me and the summits of the neighboring mountains. A cold mist was flying by me which was lit up by the rays of the sun into all the hues of the rainbow and seemed to realize the beautiful description by Byron of the Spirit's Home:
"My mansion in the clouds
Which the breath of twilight builds
And the summer sunset guilds
With the azure and vermillion
Which is mixed for my pavillion."
As I stood and looked down upon the forests below, I felt a species of awe which I never before felt. It required but a small stretch of imagination to fancy the forest below was some vast assemblage of people. In fact, a person could imagine what he pleased in such a situation. I delivered a couple of declamations without drawing any particular marks of approbation from my audience with the exception of a couple of large ravens which had established themselves in a large tree below me and croaked in a manner which might have been mistaken for Encore! Encore! But I am not vain.
John Hooker, my brother and myself stayed on the top of the mountain all night. We kindled a large fire and spent the night in talking, looking at the stars and trying to sleep. All below was in a deep shade and to look down the sides of the mountain seemed like looking into a vast cavern, but all the stars shown with uncommon brilliancy. We were above the mists and smoke of the lower world, and they seemed much more bright than they do even in a cold winter night. The prospect a little before sunrise was grand. Below us on the East for 50 miles in extent it was one level sea of fog of the purest white, checkered here and there by the top of some blue mountain that rose above it and looked like an island as beautiful as even the far famed and poetic Atlantis. In a short time, the sun rose far off over the mountains of New Hampshire, and when its level beams fell on the mist it assumed all the splendid coloring of the evening clouds. It was a sight that richly repaid us for all our toil. About an hour after sunrise, we took a line of march for home (Duxbury) which we reached a little after noon, Saturday we came as far as Lincoln, and Sunday we went to Bristol, attended meeting and in the afternoon walked home. If my uncle will let me, I shall go to the White Mountains next week with Hyde."
A tree to him was adorable. Beneath some lofty Weymouth pine he would harken to the wind soughing through the boughs, and, with a smile, murmur, "It is singing Wareham." That vista of Ocean as his vessel passed out of the Chesapeake! Many a time in later years when a heavy storm was brewing, did he go to Rockaway Beach and spend a day looking out over the billows sweeping shoreward and muse. Watching a procession of clouds, the expression of his grave face took on a kind of rapture. The poetic was the side present to his mind. What friendships he would have formed at Concord! But this was not to be. He and Ralph Waldo Emerson were fated, thus to meet and thus to pass.
Not being attracted to Emerson his attention was turned to Aaron Burr, then a resident of New York. Col. Burr, wearing a cloak of military cut and glancing quickly from side to side with glittering eyes as he traversed the streets, was in the twilight of his career in 1833, a figure at whom passers-by turned to gaze and Mr. Stuart studied deeply this survivor of the political era which succeeded the Revolutionary War. He listed to the views of contemporaries of Burr and Hamilton and came to the conclusion that had the duel at Weehawken resulted in the death of Burr, then the martyred Hamilton might have received in some measure the obloquy with which Nemesis pursues the successful duellist in after life and that has been dealt out to Burr's memory.
But, even so, he looked upon Aaron Burr as the arch schemer who introduced into our laws that type of corporation which is disguised to mask the end actually sought and which conceals powers of monopoly under ambiguous phrases. He pondered often over Burr's subtle intellect and parliamentary dexterity, which found its congenial employment in this form of covert attack upon the policy of our institutions. Often would Mr. Stuart, as he went by the old building No. 40 Wall Street (long since torn down) turn to gaze at the gigantic statue of the Water God Aquarius with his amphora placed above the doorway. He appreciated the subtlety that, utilizing for its pretext a period of fever arising from contaminated pumps and wells, could draft an Act entitled "An Act to Supply the City of New York with Pure and Wholesome Water" and holding nevertheless a Banking Corporation of endless duration hidden under its water surface. And the corporation's decision that Aquarius was a more appropriate emblem than Mercury for paper money amused him with its sardonic humor. And he thought with what a sarcastic smile Aaron Burr passing through Wall Street must have glanced up at that heathen image and have chuckled to think how he had opened the door for the army of corporations modelled on this prototype which were stealing into all the channels of business and dominating private effort and enterprise. Stories were related to him telling how Burr was wont secretly to scrutinize the title of some parcel of land. If an available flaw caught his attention he would quietly lay his plans and then come down upon the unsuspecting owner who would have to buy him off. How much truth there was in these stories it is impossible to say. Burr called on a client, and lady who had a club foot. This deformity made her waddle in an uncouth manner and upon entering the parlor, she begged Mr. Burr to excuse her awkwardness. "Really, Madam," he replied with a most gallant bow, "I deemed it merely a graceful limp." And then that retort of Burr to Chancellor Kent when the latter, forgetting his proprieties, shouted "You are a scoundrel." "The opinions of the learned Chancellor are always entitled to the highest consideration."
Mr. Stuart was notified he could come out to Ohio and complete his legal education in the office of Joshua A. Giddings who afterwards attained great prominence as Member of Congress from the Northwestern Reserve. Toward the middle of 1834, he departed for the West. But he did not go as far as Ohio for he paused in Western New York, where he secured a place as law student in the office of James Burt at Franklinville, near Olean in Cattaraugus County. He worked for his board at Mr. Burt's and was allowed the use of the meagre (sic) library.
For sixteen months he rode the circuit in Cattaraugus and adjoining counties in Pennsylvania and New York, and, not having been admitted to the bar, tried such Justice of the Peace actions as are entrusted to the neophyte. He recalled that in one of these actions - in Allegany County, a "horse case", lasting two days - he was pitted against a rough hewn young fellow, named Martin Grover, whom many years afterwards he found sitting as one of the judges of the Court of Appeals at Albany.
His journeys in this rough region when the weather was inclement entailed hardship. He used often to reach home at midnight, and tired as he was, would have to care for his equally tired horse before going to rest himself. He was in his twenty-fifth year five feet eight and one-half, "well set up", as the phrase went, and exceedingly active. When weary of riding he would spring from the saddle and run two or three miles along the trail threading those primeval forests, his well trained horse trotting close behind. Usually he carried a rifle to bring down such game as he encountered.
One business expedition led him to Fort Wayne, Indiana. He made his way to Lake Erie and sailed to Cleveland where the boat stopped awhile and then, resuming the voyage till the corner of Michigan came in view, turned into the harbor of Toledo. There he embarked on a periauger and paddled for more than a hundred miles on the Maumee River. The stream flowed sluggishly between walls of trees towering above the margin and festooned with vines. During the voyage a large wild turkey tried to fly over the river and, its strength failing, fell into the water where it was easily captured. Landings here and there led to log cabins beyond the marshy borders of the Maumee. Near one of these cabins towered an immense "button ball" tree, with a curl of smoke rising through its foliage. He was amused to find it a "smoke-house." It had a rude door and a fire smouldered within the cavity which extended up to and orifice among the branches. Hanging from pegs were hams, one of which the gaunt sallow mistress of the cabin reached with a long pole, and took down to cut a few slices to fry with eggs for his meal. Like most of these settlers, she suffered from chills and fever, and the free use of whiskey were assumed to hold in check this ailment. Asking her for a drink, she stepped into a barrel and filling a bowl handed it to him. Supposing it was water, he took a mouthful, only to blister his mouth with raw spirit. Thereupon he asked for water. "Go out to the spring", she replied, pointing to an enclosure of rails, at some distance. Here he found a spring, but it welled up in a swampy spot where filthy hogs were wallowing, so he went without a drink. Is it any wonder that such careless sanitary arrangements caused almost universal sickness among the first settlers in Ohio and Indiana? The woodlands were filled with droves of half wild hogs roving about for food and only occasionally being fed at the house.
The raftsmen, who floated logs down the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh, Pa., assembled their "drives" at Olean. These lumbermen and rivermen were wild and lawless. Olean at this period was quite as disorderly as most frontier settlements. Gambling, quarrelling and violence rendered Olean anything but attractive to him and he was very glad when his classmate Horatio Seymour (not the Horatio Seymour, Governor of New York) secured him a position at Lockport, N.Y., in the office of Robert H. Stevens, District Attorney of Niagara County. He reached Lockport in December 1835, and for about ten years made it his home. On his arrival he met congenial young men and social intercourse with these educated gentlemen, after the Circuit Riding, in those forelorn, forbidding settlements of Northern Pennsylvania, was indeed welcome. Speaking of these men, he used to enumerate John G. Saxe, the poet; Sullivan Caverno; Mortimer M. Southworth; Washington Hunt; etc. They met at the hotel for their meals. The hotel-keeper set out spirits freely with the meals, but whoever drank brandy or whiskey was expected to buy port or Madeira wine, and if a boarder failed to do so he became aware soon of unfriendly regard on the part of his host. The results of this mistaken hospitality were only too evident in the intemperance at Lockport in those days and Mr. Stuart saw some promising careers ruined.
Everything was flourishing and a great future was predicted for Lockport. A railroad from Lockport to Niagara Falls was just completed and in making a trip over it a curious incident befell him. The passenger car was very small and as he entered he tripped over a sprawling leg. Its owner, an immense man, made no move to withdraw the leg, but, most curiously begging his pardon, explained that it was rigid from a wound received during the War of 1812. Mr. Stuart entering into conversation responded that he had lost his father in that war. The gentleman asked in what regiment he served and upon learning said, "Why, I was Colonel of that regiment! What was your father's name?" "Aaron Stewart from Vermont, an Orderly Sergeant." "Is that so? I distinctly recall Sergeant Stewart. He was a splendid soldier." How surprising was this chance meeting! How gratifying to Mr. Stuart to talk with one who knew and appreciated his father. This individual was Colonel Eleazer W. Ripley and he told a great deal about the operations in that war.
In the beginning of this Memoir allusion was made to a letter written by Aaron Stewart and it may not be amiss to reproduce it here. It is as follows:
"New Haven, March 11th, 1813.
Hon'd Sir: - Nature in her unerring decrees has wisely ordained a law which imposes a duty from man to man as citizens, teaching them their dependence on each other, which constitutes the basis and cements the bonds of society. And although one man's talents may infinitely outshine another's "tis a gift he received from the predisposes of events and if philanthropy is a companion of knowledge he must commiserate those below him - not by a cold expression of sorrow - but by a benevolent act of kindness, which may be done in various ways without expense, and with very little trouble. You, my honored sir, have this gift within your power. You have two sons who are amply provided with the good things of this life - another exactly the reverse. He has a request for you to make to one of your friends who will be happy to oblige you. I have now enrolled my name in the Army of the U.S. The consequence is my own. The necessity of the war we agree in.
I have been introduced to Colonel Ripley who commands my Reg't. He was a classmate in college with S. Swift, Esq. Mr. Hopkins under whom I enlisted told me to carry a line from two who are supposed to be men of influence here. I accordingly did it. The Colo (sic) did not dispute it but told me Nature had signed a recommend in my countenance. In the course of conversation finding I lived in New Haven he asked me if I was acquainted with Mr. Swift. I told him I was, he replied that any direction from Mr. Swift would supercede the necessity of any further inquiries.
That, sir, is the request I wish you to make to him. It will meliorate my condition and Mr. Swift will not hesitate to grant you that favor. I now enclose the substance of what I wish him to write with a desire for him to dress it in such a manner as he pleases and give it to me in an open letter to Colo (sic) Ripley. This favor if you concede to it and if it should be my lot to fall in the service of the constituted authority of my country, you will have the consolating reflection of granting the last favor ever solicited by your unfortunate, & wishing to be your dutiful son.
Aaron Stewart
Mr. John Stewart.
Addressed to "Cap't John Stewart, Middlebury".
Mr. Stuart passed his examination for admission to the bar at Utica, July 15th, 1836. Joshua A. Spencer was the examiner. Mr. Stuart once related that Luther R. Marsh, who sat next to him, became perplexed over questions upon "trover" propounded by Mr. Spencer. When Marsh was apparently cornered, Mr. Spencer asked, "At this stage of the action, what would you do?" Marsh pondered awhile and replied, "I would advise my client to retain as special counsel, Joshua A. Spencer." The humor of this reply carried the day and with a general "laugh" he was passed. Mr. Marsh and Mr. Stuart, meeting thus for the first time, became lifelong friends; Mr. Marsh was a most tactful speaker and graceful writer and a lawyer of rare adroitness. His hallucination as to "Diss De Barr Spirit Pictures", which caused such widespread comment, was a sadness to all who knew Mr. Marsh. They deeply regretted seeing this courteous, venerable man exposed to the storm of ridicule showered upon him by the public press.
Soon after Mr. Stuart's admission to practice, he formed a partnership with Mr. Stevens and later Billings P. Learned came from New London, Conn., and was admitted to the firm which became very successful.
The business of the firm required the partners to do a great deal of traveling to and fro between the different county seats, as well as to Buffalo and Albany and into Canada West, or Upper Canada, as the Province of Ontario was then termed. In his first years at Lockport before the railroad links were united in a continuous line between Buffalo and Albany, he traveled on the packet boats of the Erie Canal and greatly enjoyed the experience. These boats were much faster than the boats of burthen and moved along, night as well as day, with a surge that swept the banks. If one was not in great haste, this canal transportation was a delightful method of viewing the country.
In May, 1837, he married Miss Jane E. Campbell in Windsor, Vermont. She was the daughter of Edward Raymond Campbell. Three children were born in Lockport, N.Y., of this marriage.
Being a fine speaker, he was greatly in demand during the political campaigns. He once made a tour with Silas Wright, speaking with him daily and nightly from the same platform. One of his treasured memento was an ivory-headed hickory cane with a silver circlet inscribed, "Homer H. Stuart from Andrew Jackson." President Jackson who knew him personally sent this cane to him.
The stand which Jackson took in combating South Carolina Nullification was in consonance with his ideas. Thus quite naturally he stepped in the Jacksonian ranks. The views, however, of Hamilton, rather than those of Jefferson, appealed to him and the period of his activity in the Jacksonian Democracy was merely an episode. Although he believed in party organization, the mere party name was never sacrosanct. He clung to the principle, let the name go where it listed. But in 1844 he ceased all political work, and withdrew from his law firm. Mr. Learned also withdrew and a little later went to Albany where he engaged in banking and became president of the old Union Bank of Albany. Mr. Stuart brought his family to Williamsburgh, then a separate municipality, but for many years past a part of Brooklyn. He was corporate counsel for Williamsburgh till its union with Brooklyn and also had an office in New York City.
Soon, however, a great grief overtook him in the deaths, within the space of six months, of his wife and two of the children. The business failure of his brother-in-law, for whom he had endorsed notes, swept away all his accumulations and left him without means. Leaving Williamsburgh, he settled in New York City and applied himself to his profession and to the recoupment of his fortune.
It was in 1847 that he became acquainted with Edgar Allan Poe, whom he used to meet familiarly. He did not endorse Rufus Wilmot Griswold's report which has clung persistently to Poe's memory, namely, that Poe was a hard drinker. Whatever wildness Poe may have shown while a student in Virginia had disappeared at the date of his acquaintance, and his bearing was that of a quiet and refined gentleman. Mr. Stuart said his manner was shy and that he was never garrulous. He would smile as he related how Poe was wont to declaim "The Raven" in a singalong tone. While not especially attracted by Poe's prose writings, nevertheless for his versification he had the greatest admiration and could quote "Annabel Lee" and contrast it with Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and analyze them in an effort to locate the charm.
He was on pleasant terms with James Fenimore Cooper, whose works he delighted in reading. He contributed to the Knickerbocker Magazine and knew Lewis Gaylord Clark, its editor, George H. Colton, the poet, (who died early in life leaving the poem "Tecumpseh" a forerunner of Longfellow's "Hiawatha"); Lewis Tappan; the versatile and charming Christopher P. Cranch and the courtly William Betts, whose delightful country seat, "Merriwood", revealed at once the scholar and the aristocrat. Nor must there be omitted from these friends the name of Andrew Jackson Downing, who yielded his life to save that of a stranger, when the burning of the Hudson River steamboat "Henry Clay" occurred, and whose career of only thirty-seven years bears out the saying, "To Genius belongs the Hereafter", for that Genius lives to-day in the landscape gardening environing our National Capitol, and in many of the beautiful estates along the Hudson.
September 4, 1849, Mr. Stuart married, in New York City, Miss Margaret Elizabeth Dunbar, born in Worthington, Conn., May 28, 1826. She was the daughter of Daniel Dunbar and Katharine Chauncey Goodrich. Samuel G. Goodrich ("Peter Parley") was the uncle of Mrs. Homer H. Stuart and cordial intercourse existed between Mr. Goodrich and Mr. Stuart. Often did Mr. Goodrich consult him in the preparation of his works and notably in his last work, "The Illustrated Animal Kingdom", in two volumes - a work which has had few equals for popular reading and reference.
Adjoining Mr. Stuart's country place was a small farm. Its owner - a very aged colored man - was called "Barkalow." He was of the best type of the pure blooded African, full six feet, straight, well proportioned; his very dark countenance surmounted by snowy wool and revealing, when he smiled, beautiful teeth. He had been brought from Africa in childhood soon after the Revolutionary War and while yet a young man had purchased his freedom. For many years he had followed the vocation of supplying the New York market with wild fowl shot on the salt marshes and bays, and at last by dint of economy had paid for this demesne of a dozen or so acres. With the aid of his grandson he tilled successfully and lived comfortably.
Sunday afternoons Mr. Stuart would stroll over to see "Barkalow", and would lean against the old rail fence listening to his discourse. He enjoyed hearing him discuss the phenomena of Nature of which the aged man had been an acute and accurate observer. "Barkalow's" description of life on the "Salt Meadows" was often a topic and fascinated Mr. Stuart who loved those beautiful expanses fringing the Southern shore of "Seawanhaka", the Montauk Indian name for Long Island. "Barkalow" related how out upon the broad meadow he had erected a comfortable wigwam thatched both wall and top with driftwood gathered from bleached winrow defining the vanguard line of the new moon tide. It had a hearth and a couch of meadow hay. In graphic language he recounted the calm that came over him when the hunting of the day had ended and he and the retriever had returned to the humble roof. How he would prepare the evening meal and then lie down to be lulled by a cricket choir chirping in the thatch of the wigwam. How, when wakeful, he would lie watching the fitful gleam of the fire and note the whimpering of wild fowl, winging through the night, while from afar came the booming of the Atlantic, Deep calleth unto Deep. "There I felt never lonely". As he talked thus, in well chosen speech, it was hard indeed to realize that he was unlettered. Mr. Stuart often said, "Barkalow" was a poet", and a true attachment existed between them.
Another "dusky" neighbor was "Aunt Mary Crummell", mother of the Reverend Alexander Crummell, who was graduated at Cambridge, England, took orders in the Church of England, and went to Liberia where of officiated for years and where "Aunt Mary" died. Later he returned and was a rector of St. Luke's, Washington, D.C. In 1883 both he and Mr. Stuart were at Saratoga and the Reverend Mr. Crummell conducted the evening service.
Allusion to "Barkalow" and Alexander Crummell summons to mind the Anti-Slavery Agitation. A member of the Stuart family had migrated to Virginia and acquired slaves. In 1799 this Stuart liberated his slaves and to make sure that their freedom never would be taken away, sent them to Londonderry, N.H. "Aunt Flora" and her "pickaninnies", "George Washington", "Isaiah" and "Salona", made the long journey from "Dixie Land", grew up, lived useful, happy lives in this quiet hamlet, and, in the fullness of time, one after another, passed away. Aged citizens of Londonderry spoke of them with affection as they recounted the friendship of yore and the tender ministrations of their mother "Aunt Flora" in the sick room. Beneath New Hampshire's turf rest the little band of loyal, law-abiding freedmen and the marbles erected by the town perpetuate the memory of the love in which "Aunt Flora" and "Miss Salona Stuart" were held. Gloaming shrouds the events of one hundred years ago and has obscured the Christian name of their emancipator. But, like the manumission granted centuries earlier by "The Dying Norman Baron", the memory of his righteous action lives --
"Every vassal of his banner,
Every serf born to his manor,
All those wronged and wretched creatures,
By his hand were freed again."
Dislike of Slavery was to be expected of a scion of these Londonderry Stuarts, one born in Vermont, the first State that formally abolished slavery, and this was true in Mr. Stuart's case. He realized it while witnessing slave auctions at Richmond, Virginia. He never forgot the painful emotion then experienced on beholding the sundering of families. Still, on his return to the North, he did not feel debarred from taking part in the local political disputes of New York State, even though he could not blind himself to the fact that the question as to the abolition of Slavery in every one of the States must some day be faced by the nation.
His abrupt withdrawal from politics was due to an incident in 1844. An Abolitionist came to Lockport. Mr. Stuart strolled in with some companions to hear the address. The speaker was wanting in tact and offended the audience. An uproar drowned his words every time he tried to plead his cause, but his attempts to resume were pathetic. The outrageous treatment accorded the speaker aroused Mr. Stuart's love of fair play. He wen... [original is cut off here]
(https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/64278914/homer-hine-stuart)
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1810 - 1885 (75 years)
