ANDREW STEWART married MISS ELIZABETH SHRIVER
A History of Uniontown: The County Seat of Fayette County, Pennsylvania
Author: Hadden, James, 1845-1923, Uniontown, PA
JAMES HADDEN – author of Washington's & Braddock's Expeditions
Akron, Ohio: Printed by the New Werner Co., 1913
Pg. 775
It is concluded that the HONORABLE ANDREW STEWART was Uniontown's most distinguished public resident.He was the eldest son of ABRAHAM STEWART and MARY OLIPHANT, the former of York and the latter of Chester Co., PA.
He was born on his father's farm, June 11, 1791, in German Township where the village of McClellandtown is now located.It appears that ABRAHAM STEWART, a prominent citizen in his day, traded this farm to William McClelland for one in Wharton Twp., known as the “Land of Cakes,” and where the son, ANDREW, was reared.When a boy, at the age of 13 years, he witnessed the re-interment of the bones of General Edward Braddock, when his father, as road supervisor, moved them from their original burial place in the old Braddock road, to their present site.After attending the schools of his locality he taught a few terms and clerked in a furnace store.
He read law and was admitted to the bar of Fayette Co., January, 1815, and was soon after elected to the general assembly, in which body he served three years, after which he was appointed United States District Attorney by President Monroe, but resigned the office in 1820 to take his seat in congress to which he had been elected from this district, where he served for a period of 16 years out of 26 and then declined further re-elections, closing his last term in 1849, being contemporary with John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and many others of national repute.
In the campaign of 1822, MR. STEWART received a handsome majority over Mr. Clevenger, his Greene County competitor, by the free and abundant distribution of watermelons.
In the campaign of 1828, Thomas Irwin defeated Mr. (pg. 776) Stewart for congress, and MR. STEWART was burned in effigy in front of the court house.This disgraceful conduct on the part of a few of the lower class met with such condemnation and rebuke by the masses of the people, and so increased the popularity of MR. STEWART that at the next election he defeated Mr. Irwin by an overwhelming majority.
During the Jackson -Adams campaign, 1818, MR. STEWART was favorable to Adams, and although Jackson had a majority of 2,800 in this congressional district, MR. STEWART was elected by a majority more than two to one over his competitor, a result unprecedented in the history of elections.
MR. STEWART was the first to bring the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal before congress, which was to extend from Georgetown in the District of Columbia to Lake Erie, and to have passed the distance of 250 miles through Pennsylvania.Rather than abandon the project, which at first did not meet the approval on congress, he secured the services of James Shriver, a competent surveyor, who made a survey, and whose report removed all doubt of the practicability of the enterprise.An appropriation was secured, and on July 4, 1828, ground was first broken in its construction by President John Quincy Adams and others prominently connected with the head of the government and by foreign representatives.The construction was completed as far as Cumberland, where, after some time, the project was abandoned.
In the convention at Philadelphia in 1848, they nominated Zachary Taylor for the presidency.It was left to the Pennsylvania delegation to nominate a candidate for the vice-presidency, and upon the first ballot MR. STEWART received 14 out of 26, the remaining 12 were scattering, when, without taking a second ballot to make it unanimous, the chairman of the delegation hurried back into the convention and reported that they had failed to agree, whereupon Mr. Fillmore was nominated and confirmed, otherwise had MR. STEWART received the nomination, to which he was justly entiteld, he would have succeeded to the presidency of the U. S. upon the death of President Taylor.
MR. STEWART was married in 1825, to MISS ELIZABETH SHRIVER, daughter of DAVID SHRIVER, superintendent of the eastern division of the National road, extending from Cumberland, Maryland, (pg. 777) to within one mile of Brownsville, PA, by which marriage he had six children.His first child, DAVID SHRIVER STEWART, was born on what was since known as the Hugh Graham farm, three miles west of Uniontown.One son, LIEUTENANT WILLIAM F. STEWART, U. S. N., was lost at sea when the British steamer, “Bombay,” collided with the U. S. steamer, “Oneida,” off Yokohama, Japan, Jan. 24, 1870.
MR. STEWART owned the lot on the corner of Morgantown and West Main streets on which he built a row of brick houses known as “Stewart's Row,” in which he made his residence while he erected a large brick residence next east of the court house in 1835, and in which he had his law office.This building was subsequently used as a hotel and known as the Clinton House.It was torn away preparatory to the erection of the present court house.In this he lived while he also erected a frame mansion near the eastern part of town in which he spent the latter part of his honorable life, and where he died July 16, 1872, in the 82nd year of his age.
MR. STEWART had bought over 80,000 acres of land in Fayette County, and at his death owned between 30,000 and 40,000 acres.His name is perpetuated by the naming of a township in his honor in 1855.
Soon after the Soldier's Orphan school was established at Uniontown MR. STEWART magnanimously offered to appropriate the interest of $10,000 to be distributed annually among the children who should leave that school at the age of 16 years, according to merit, based upon scholarship, industry and good conduct.This happily conceived proposition to assist these dependent children, was faithfully executed for several years, and perhaps ceased only at the death of MR. STEWART.
From the fact that MR. STEWART was an uncompromising advocate of a tariff for the protection of American industries he acquired the sobriquet of “Tariff Andy,” and in order that MR. STEWART may not be misunderstood, the following is his own version of his policy:
“Protect and cherish your national industry by a wise system of finance, selecting in the first place those articles which you can and ought to supply to the extent of your own wants – food, clothing, habitation and defense – and to these give ample and adequate protection, so as to secure it at all times an abundance (pg.778) supply at home.Next select the luxuries consumed by the rich, and impose of them such duties as the wants of the Government may require for revenue; and then take the necessaries of life consumed by the poor, and articles which we cannot supply, used in manufactories, and make them free, or subject to the lowest rates of duty.”