Captain John ‘Bushyhead’ Stuart, British superintendent for the southern Indian

Biography

John Stuart is a member of Clan Stewart.

Birth and Early Career

John Stuart was baptized 24 September 1718 in Inverness, Inverness-shire, Scotland.[1] He was the son of "Bailie" John Stuart, a merchant of Inverness, and his wife Christiana MacLeod (1692–1721).[2]

He was sent to London by 1736 to train as a merchant, and by October 1737 he was working in that capacity in San Lucar de Barrameda, Spain, where he learned Spanish. Perhaps aided by his knowledge of Spanish, he joined the British warship "Centurion" as purser on Commodore George Anson's expedition against the Spanish in the Pacific, leaving England in September 1740. The ship circumnavigated the globe and returned on 15 June 1744.[2]

South Carolina

Commodore Anson had previously served on the Carolina station, which perhaps led Stuart to travel to South Carolina in the spring of 1748. In June of that year, he entered into a mercantile partnership with Patrick Reid in the firm of Stuart & Reid of Charles Town. They owned two ships and participated in the slave trade. The partnership continued until Reid's death in 1754. Stuart had returned to England in 1749 in an attempt to improve the firm's finances, remaining there until late 1750. His efforts were unsuccessful, however, and by 1756 his business was bankrupt.[2][3]

Having married into the wealthy Fenwick family, Stuart also acquired land, eventually owning over 10,000 acres in South Carolina and Georgia. He had an indigo plantation on Ladys Island, Granville County, as well as two plantations at Maple Canes in Colleton County, a tract at Four Holes in Berkeley County, and smaller tracts in other parts of the province. His plantations were worked by about 200 slaves. Stuart also owned a house in Charles Town.[3]

Indian Affairs

Stuart became a militia captain in 1756 and was sent with a detachment of men to oversee the building of a fort (named Fort Loudon) in Cherokee territory in what is now Tennessee. He returned to South Carolina after the completion of the fort in 1759. When the Cherokee War broke out in 1760, Stuart was ordered back to Fort Loudon and negotiated an agreement with the Cherokees for the surrender of the fort. The agreement was broken, however, and the Cherokees attacked the British soldiers, taking Captain Stuart prisoner. His Cherokee friend Attakullakulla helped him to escape and make his way to Virginia, where he joined British troops advancing on the fort. Stuart returned to Charles Town in December 1760.[4][3][5]

In 1762 he was appointed by the British government as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern District, with an annual salary of 1,000 pounds. He held the position until his death and was actively engaged in improving British relations with the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and other southern tribes. He was also appointed to the Council of East Florida (1764) and as an advisor to the Royal Council of South Carolina (1770).[3]

American Revolution and Death

When the American Revolution began in 1775, Stuart's support of the British government made him "obnoxious" to the Revolutionary party. There was apparently fear that he would use his influence to encourage Indian tribes to attack the Americans, and in June 1775 the Provincial Congress ordered his arrest. He was able to flee first to St. Augustine, East Florida, then to Pensacola, West Florida, where he continued to encourage the southern Indian tribes to support the British. His property in South Carolina was confiscated by the Revolutionary government, and his wife and daughter were held in Charles Town for two years before they were able to escape and join him in Florida. Stuart raised a British regiment in Florida in 1776 and was commissioned as a colonel. [6][7][3][5]

John Stuart wrote his Will on 16 February 1776, mentioning his wife Sarah, son John Stuart, daughter Christiana Fenwick, and grandchildren John and Joseph Graham. Worn out from his efforts, John Stuart died in Pensacola on 24 March 1779.[7]

Marriage

About 1749 he married Sarah Fenwick, daughter of John Fenwick and Elizabeth Gibbes of the Province of South Carolina. John Fenwick had returned to England in 1744, and his daughter Sarah was not yet married when he wrote his Will in February 1746.[8]They were married and in England when Bailie John Stuart wrote on 28 April 1750, suggesting that his son and wife visit Scotland. They were still in England on 23 June 1750 when Bailie John Stuart congratulated his son on the birth of a daughter.[2] In addition to his oldest daughter Sarah (m. James Graham, d. 1774)[9][10], they had another daughter Christiana (m. Edward Fenwick), and a son John Joseph (b. 1757).[11] Sarah survived her husband and moved to England after the end of the Revolutionary War.[7]

Cherokee Name and Family

According to Cherokee lore reported by Emmet Starr, John Stuart had a son called Oo-nodutu or Bushyhead by a Cherokee woman named Susannah Emory. The nickname Bushyhead was supposedly also given to John Stuart because of his hair. Bushyhead's children took the surname Bushyhead.[12] Research Notes under the profile for John Bushyhead question whether the stories of his parentage are correct.

Research Notes:

Widely recorded as the son of Susannah Emory and John Stuart, this contradicts the statements made by William Holland that he was about 45-50 years old in 1829 (thus born 1780-1785) and was "a full blood [who] speaks little English." Susannah Emory was the granddaughter and daughter of white men, John Stuart was white. Susannah's age at the time John Stuart was in the Cherokee Nation makes a child of theirs unlikely. More likely possibilities are that this man was confused/conflated with a different child of Susannah, that he was the son of Susannah and an unknown Cherokee man, or that he was actually Susannah's grandchild with an unknown Cherokee mother and that a father and son known as Bushyhead have been conflated.

Sources

1. ↑ "Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XB98-P3N : 12 February 2020), Stuart, 1718.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Letter-Book of Bailie John Steuart (Publications of the Scottish History Society. Second Series. Vol. IX (1915), pp. lviii-lvix, 397, 409, 433, 445-57, 459-79, 485 https://archive.org/details/letterbookofbail92steu/page/n9/mode/2up
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Edgar, Walter B. and N. Louise Bailey. Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Volume II: the Commons House of Assembly 1692-1775 (1977), pp. 661-63
4. ↑ McCrady, Edward. The History of South Carolina under the Royal Government, 1719-1776 (1899) pp. 347-9 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015008975529&view=1up&...
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Captain John Stuart - Beloved Father of the Cherokee" http://www.carolana.com/SC/Royal_Colony/captain_john_stuart.html
6. ↑ McCrady, Edward. The History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 (1901), pp. 17-18, 187-88 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t5gb2rd5m&vie...
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Claim of Sarah Stuart, American Loyalist Claims, Series II; Class: AO 13; Piece: 135, UK, American Loyalist Claims, 1776-1835 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. includes lists of property and abstract of Will of John Stuart
8. ↑ Withington, Lothrop. “South Carolina Gleanings in England (Continued).” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 7, no. 1 (1906): 28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27575121
9. ↑ Salley, A. S. (Alexander Samuel), 1871-1961, Marriage Notices In the South-Carolina And American General Gazette From May 30, 1766, to February 28, 1781, And In Its Successor the Royal Gazette (1781-1782). Columbia, S.C.: Printed for the Historical commission of South Carolina by the State company, 1914, p. 33 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044086448891&view=1up&...
10. ↑ Webber, Mabel L. “Death Notices from the South Carolina and American General Gazette, and Its Continuation the Royal Gazette: May 1766-June 1782 (Continued).” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 17, no. 2 (1916): 89-90 http://www.jstor.org/stable/27569392.
11. ↑ “St. Helena’s Parish Register (Continued).” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 23, no. 4 (1922): 185 http://www.jstor.org/stable/27569595.
12. ↑ Starr, Emmet. History of the Cherokee Indians and Their Legends and Folk Lore (1921) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106005942559&view=1up&...

Burial. "Find A Grave Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV23-D547 : 13 December 2015), John Stuart, 1779; Burial, , , ,, ; citing record ID 61974391, Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com.
The Cherokees by Grace Steele Woodward Publication: U, (Norman, OK: Univ. of OKLA, 1963).
Ancestry Fact Page. https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/1026149/person/390...

Source: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stuart-2573

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Capt. John Stuart, the first husband of Susannah Emory, was born in Scotland, came to America in 1733 as a young lad and settled in South Carolina. He became a captain in the British army and was second in command of the garrison at Ft. Loudon, Georgia when it was forced to capitulate to the militant Cherokees on August 7, 1760. Through the intervention of Attacullaculla, a civil chief among the Cherokees, the life of Capt. Stuart was spared from the general massacre of the garrison which ensued and was removed to Virginia where he was released. Subsequently, he became the British Indian Agent to the tribes south of the Ohio river and married young Susannah Emory. Capt. Stuart became known among the Cherokees as Oo-na-du-to or Bushyhead because of his heavy growth of blonde hair.2 The ambitious captain, during the early days of our War of the Revolution, conceived a plan to exterminate the rebellious whig colonists in one grand uprising and butchery by the Indians led by English tories, in June 1776, confiscate their property and allot their lands to new loyalist colonists. The entire scheme failed and Capt. Stuart was subsequently stationed at Pensacola, Florida, where he died on February 21, 1779. His only son, also known as Oo-na-du-to or Bushyhead, married Nancy Foreman, the half-blood Cherokee Indian daughter of Anthony Foreman, a Scotchman, and lived, died and was buried in Georgia. Nancy removed with a contingent of the Cherokees led by her son Jesse Bushyhead to the West, in the spring of 1839. She is reputed to have lived to the advanced age of 104 years and died in 1868 in the Illinois river country near Tahlequah.

2"History of the United States" by Redpath, Vol. VI, p. 2505. @ http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v014/v014p349.html

Further Reading

• https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/stuart-john
• http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/lit/bushyhd.html
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/61974391/john-stuart
• John Stuart and the Southern colonial frontier: a study of Indian relations, war, trade, and land problems in the Southern wilderness, 1754-1775 John Richard Alden Gordian Press, 1966 - History - 384 pages google books