My Family Tree

There are two interesting theories about the origins of Daniel Stewart. Theory 1 states that Daniel arrived in the United States in about 1651 as a slave. Theory 2 states that Daniel was a descendant of an early immigrant named James Steward, who may have arrived on the ship that arrived next after the Mayflower. Theory 1 has been mostly discredited, but I list it here for historical purposes of proving our ancestry.

From the Stewart Clan Magazine:
Daniel Stewart, "a Scotchman", was admitted an inhabitant of Barnstable, Mass., Oct. 3 1662, with 18 others who were either married or 24 years of age. There is nothing to indicate that he had relatives in this country. He was living in Eastham June 12, 1671, when he sold all his land there, on the east side of Bass River, to John Doane, Jr. His wife Mary acknowledged the deed. On Mar. 4, 1673-4, Daniel, then living at Barnstable, sued Nathaniel Fitzrandall for assault and was awarded 20 shillings. Oct. 9, 1674, he had some controversy with Richard Handy of Sandwich over the ownership of a marsh. In 1684 he was a resident landowner in Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard, and soon after located in Edgartown, where he died in 1703. His will, dated Jan. 6, 1701-2, was proved Aug. 4, 1703, and named wife Mary; sons James, John and Charles; daughters Dorcas Bailey and Sarah Harlock. In this will he gave the homestead to his wife Mary; two heifers to his daughter Sarah; all other lands to his sons John and Charles; a shilling to his son James, and a shilling to his daughter Dorcas. Daughter Sarah died childless, and her will was probated in 1745, listing her siblings the same as above.

From "The History of Martha's Vineyard" by C.E. Banks:
Daniel Stewart, a Scotchman, perhaps one of those brought hither after the Scotch rebellion, is first found at Barnstable, Mass. (1662), where he was admitted an inhabitant. Thence he removed to Eastham before 1671 and came to the Vineyard before 1680, settling at T., where he remained about four years. Then he removed to E. remaining there until his death in 1703. His will 6 Jan. 1701-2 was probated 4 Aug. 1703 with Benjamin Smith as executor. He married Mary ____ of whom nothing definite is known except that she was living at the date of his will. No records of this family exist and the following named children appear in his will:
James, b. (1664)
Dorcas, b. (1666), m. 1. Philip Smith; 2. Philip Bailey
Sarah, b. (1668); m. Thomas Harlock
John, b. (1670)
Charles, b. (1672)

***THEORY 1:
Deb's Note: A birthdate of about 1636 has been proposed for Daniel, although I do not know of the original source for that date. If this is true and if Daniel was indeed brought to America after the Scotch Rebellion, then he would have been transported in or after 1651, at the age of 15, as a white slave. This was after the disastrous Battle of Worcester, where Cromwell's troups defeated the Scottish attempt to reinstate the crown of Charles II, who was himself a Stuart. Historians estimate that about ten thousand Scots were taken prisoner, and some of those were transported into slavery while many others were eventually set free in their homeland. One source (Savage) states that the majority of these transportees died of scurvy or "a broken heart", and not one in ten left progeny. Daniel would have been lucky to survive, live out his slavery and become a member of society.

The following information may or may not pertain to the emigration of our ancestor Daniel Stewart:
[Broderbund Family Archive #354, Ed. 1, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, Date of Import: Dec 29, 1999, Internal Ref. #1.354.1.96796.13]

Individual: Daniel Stewart; Place: Boston; Year: 1651

Primary Individual: Stewart, Daniel; Source Code: 9760

Source Name:
WHYTE, DONALD. A Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to the USA. Vol. 1. Baltimore: Magna Carta Book Co., 1972. 504p. 2nd pr., 1981. Source Page #: 417
Source Annotation:
Covers era prior to 1855. Compiled from correspondence and monument inscriptions, 17th and, mainly, 18th century. Prepared for the Scottish Genealogical Society. 6,470 emigrants.
From the "Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to the USA", by Donald Whyte:
Daniel Stewart was a Royalist prisoner, transported on the John & Sarah, ex. London
11 Nov 1651. Source: New England Historical & Genealogical Register, I 379 5846.
My notes:
This source has been discredited. The referenced NEHGR article does NOT name our Daniel Stewart. (The John & Sarah was the prison ship that transported 260 slaves to Boston after the disastrous Battle of Worcester.)

***THEORY 2:
Per the Stewart Clan Magazine, p. C303 (March 1938), I102, I113-5:
"Arthur G. Burt, 435 Washington Street, Whitman, Mass., has made, we believe, a wonderful discovery, which may throw a gleam of light on several lines of New England Stewarts. It apparently refers to James Steward, who came from England to Plymouth in 1621 in the Fortune, the next ship after the Mayflower, and of whom little is known. In an old book Mr. Burt found two sheets of paper of considerable age. Mr. Burt is descended from Daniel Stewart of Barnstable and Edgartown, through Daniel's son John and two of John's children -- Daniel, who married Jane Vincent, and Deborah, who married Nathaniel Vincent. Nathaniel Vincent was a son of Thomas and Sarah (Post) Vincent, while Jane was a granddaughter of Thomas, being a daughter of Thomas Jr. and Sarah (Martyn) Vincent."

Names have been translated from their spelling in the sheets, as follows: Vinson = Vincent; Hammat = Hammond; Chuatt = Stewart; and Degory = Zachary. I have denoted added notes in the Stewart Magazine (non-original text) with brackets [ ].

The text of the first sheet therefore reads:
"John Vincent's children five. John married the Hammond girl. One married James Stewart's daughter. They all came from London. [Therefore, James Stewart had a wife and a daughter, and possibly other children as well.] Thomas Vincent went to Plymouth when his brother John was sick and he and James went to Norwich, but Thomas came back to Edgartown with little Daniel who used to dig clams with his boy and the Indians. [Was Norwich in Connecticut? Was Thomas Vincent the husband of James Stewart's daughter? Why didn't the old man come back from Norwich when Thomas Vincent and little Daniel Stewart did? Had he died? Did he leave a widow? Did she remarry? Would she willingly part with little Daniel? Was he not her son? Was he for sure the Daniel Stewart who married Mary Vincent in 1648?] William Vincent from Salem was Aunt Mary's uncle.

The text of the second sheet, perhaps in a different handwriting, reads:
"Daniel Stewart married Mary Vincent, 1648. Boy John married Mary Foster's daughter Margaret. [This is getting close to home. Our Daniel Stewart had a son John Stewart who married a Margaret. Mrs. Leavitt didn't find Mary Foster's marriage in the Salem town records; it probably antedated the extant records.] Mary's grandmother was James' daughter. [This may indicate that Mary Vincent was the granddaughter of Thomas Vincent, above, and his wife James' daughter.] He came in the ship after the Mayflower. [This would precisely describe the James Steward who we know arrived on the ship Fortune on Nov. 11, 1621.] The others came after. Zachary's boy went to Plymouth may... They say the black book is still at Nantucket where they hid it. Deacon Mantur's boy had a dream about it."

Whew. This is interesting stuff! There is no official record of James Steward of the ship Fortune after 1624. It is possible that he returned to Europe, and later came back to New England between 1641-1650.

(There was indeed a Deacon Manter; Deacon Benjamin Manter of West Tisbury, Massachusetts, d. 1750. See http://www.vineyard.net/vineyard/history/manter.htm .)

Note that if Theory 2 is true, AND our Daniel Stewart was indeed married in 1648, that pushes his birth date back to about 1627. Again, I have been unable to find the original source of the estimated birth date of 1630-1636.

Piecing this theory together in a descendant outline format:

James Steward of the Fortune, married ???
Daniel Stewart b. abt 1627-1636 married Mary Vincent I, below
daughter Stewart m. Thomas Vincent
John Stewart m. Margaret Foster, dau. of Mary ( ) Foster

And:
John Vincent I m. ???
John Vincent II m. ( ) Hammond
Thomas Vincent m. daughter Stewart (above)
( ) Vincent m. ???
Mary Vincent I m. Daniel Stewart (above)

Here is further information from the Stewart Clan Magazine:

"Mark Newbie obtained a bank charter from the West Jersey assembly (in 1682) using farthings and half-pence which he had purchased in Ireland," noted _The Genealogist's Post_ for December, 1965. "These coins had been minted in Ireland some 40 years earlier to commemorate the massacre of the Protestants by the Catholics during a religious war. With these coins as currency the bank did a thriving business, but at Newbie's death the coins were recalled." The historic event which those tokens commemorated was the uprising of the Irish in 1641 to drive out the Scotch who had been planted in Ulster in the time of King James I of England on lands which had been despoiled of the ancient inhabitants by the minions of Queen Elizabeth. A few of the Scotch settlers in Ulster had married Irish girls, and many others treated the natives with kindness and fairness, because there was not as much antipathy between the two nations as there was between the Irish and the English. So, when the "great rebellion" of 1641 was brewing, some of the conspirators tried to protect their innocent friends without tipping off the impending carnage. Among the Scotchmen who are thought to have escaped to the American colonies was James Stewart. A letter written in 1911 by Dr Charles E. Banks of Portland, Maine, to George Sawin Stewart quoted from a letter written in 1869 by a daughter of Naomi Crowell, who was born in 1766, a daughter of Joseph-2 Stewart (Hugh-1) of Chatham, Mass. [B213] -- thus: "This lady states that the [Martha's] Vineyard Stuards [see Daniel Stewart, A10 and 61] were relations of her mother's; i.e., the Cape [Cod] Stuards. She says they were Scotch and fled 'in the time of the rebellion'; that they landed 'at Stewart's Landing on the Cape', wherever that may have been, and thinks the first one was James'."

The lady may have had something there. If the rebellion referred to was the Irish uprising of 1641 -- and the duke of Monmouth's rebellion against his uncle, King James II of England, in 1685 would have been away too late to catch the Cape Cod Stewarts who were here several years prior to 1670 -- it may mean that Daniel Stewart and Hugh Stewart, and probably James Stewart, a sea captain, of Weymouth, Mass., were sons of one James Stewart. He apparently had resources enough to finance a shipload of emigrees, and they came at a time when many colonists were giving up and going back. That James Stewart, if the lady's mother (Naomi Crowell, born in 1766) was right in thinking his name was James, could hardly have been the James Stewart who came to Plymouth in the ship Fortune in 1621. There is a gap of 20 years between 1621 and 1641. But we must remember that there was much going back and forth and moving about in that great fermentation.

"A James Stuart was buried in Boston,", the letter of 1869 went on, "who was an uncle of my grandmother and brother of Elsa (Alice) Stuart who married (May 2, 1756) Sylvanus Daggett", and became the mother of Michael Daggett (Dagwood). That James Stuard (Joseph 2, Hugh 1) married July 30 1755, Sarah Bradstreet, in Boston. The lady further deponed that Elijah Stuart (Daniel, John, Daniel) of Edgartown, was a "cousin" of Alice Stuart and her grandmother Lydia -- "cousin" in a generic sense. That remark led Dr. Banks to observe that "The recurrence of the names Hugh, 1751, and Michael, 1764, in the Edgartown family also makes it a stronger case for relationship between the two families. Consequently I feel reasonably sure that Hugh of Chatham and Daniel of Barnstable and Martha's Vineyard were brothers." Dr. Banks went on a dissertation on the later aspects of the case, figuring that Daniel was born about 1630, but he had nothing more about the probable James Stewart. According to his estimate, Daniel would have been 11 years old when the family fled "in the time of the rebellion," if that time were 1641. This Daniel Stewart was the "little Daniel who used to dig clams with his (Thomas Vincent's) boys and the Indians" on Martha's Vineyard island."

And, further:
Stewart Clan Magazine
Microfilm # 0908972
Vol. IX, no. 7, Jan 1931:

Quoted from Charles E. Banks.

"The Vineyard Stewards are relations of the Cape Stewards. They were Scotch and fled in the time of the Rebellion, they landed in Stewart's Landing, wherever that may be, and thinks the first one was James. James Stewart was buried in Boston.

"The rebellion here referred to may have been the uprising of the Irish in 1641 which drove many English and Scottish settlers out of Ireland. The rebellion was finally crushed in 1649 by Oliver Cromwell. It is likely that a Stewart family including Alexander, Daniel and Hugh arrived in New England some time around 1650 and the father may have been James."

***FURTHER INFORMATION:
From "The History of Martha's Vineyard", C.E. Banks:
CHILMARK.
This name is first given to the Manor of Tisbury in a deed from Thomas Mayhew to Daniel STEWART, March 26, 1680, where Mayhew calls himself "of the town of Chilmark in the Manor of Tysbery." It is mentioned in another deed under date of April 1, 1693, and appears on Simon Athearn's map of 1694. The reason for the bestowal of this name is found in its relation to the Mayhew family at the time Thomas Mayhew lived in the adjoining parish of Tisbury. It was undoubtedly found that confusion arose from the use of the names of Tisbury Manor and Tisbury, a condition which Mayhew remedied by reviving the old familiar title of one of the ancestral homes of his family.