Monongalia County, West Virginia    Biography of James Scott STEWART

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WEST VIRGINIA In History, Life, Literature and Industry
The Lewis Publishing Company 1928 - Volume 5, page 277-278 with photo

        JAMES SCOTT STEWART, professor emeritus of mathematics of West
Virginia University, is still an active figure in university circles in
Morgantown, and he gave as a student and professor fully half a century of
his life to this central institution of the state's educational system.
        Professor Stewart was born at Empire, Jefferson County, Ohio,
January 5, 1854. His grandfather, Alexander Stewart, was born in 1769 in
the Grange of Aberbothrie, went to London, was a zealous Covenanter
Presbyterian, and in 1819 came to America and settled at Steubenville,
Jefferson County, Ohio. Later he bought a farm in the vicinity of Empire
and lived out his life there. His son, James R. M. Stewart, was born in
London, England, in 1809 and was nine years of age when brought to America.
He grew up in Jefferson County, Ohio, had a common school education and was
a farmer and sawmill operator. Like his father he was a staunch Covenanter
Presbyterian and for many years an elder in the church. He was for
twenty-five years a justice of the peace. Alexander Stewart married Jean
McWhorter, who was born about 1780 within the Fortress of Gibraltar, where
her father as an officer of the English army was quartered at the time.
James R. M. Stewart married Cordelia Kemp Scott, who was
born in 1818 at London, England, of Scotch parentage, and her parents on
coming to America settled in the vicinity of Pittsburgh.
        James Scott Stewart had as his early environment a rural
neighborhood in Eastern Ohio, and while there he attended a one-room
country school. Later in 1873, at the age of nineteen, he entered West
Virginia University at Morgantown and was graduated in June, 1877. He then
taught in the preparatory department of the university while continuing his
advanced studies in mathematics, and from time to time was promoted in rank
in the faculty, in 1893 being made full professor of mathematics. He held
this chair until 1907, when he retired as professor emeritus, but continued
active in other connections with the university until 1923.
        Professor Stewart was a director of the Farmers & Merchants Bank
until its merger with the Bank of Monongahela Valley. For thirty years he
was vice president of the Morgantown Savings and Loan Society, the oldest
and largest institution of its kind in this vicinity and which has done a
great deal towards financing home owners in Morgantown. Mr. Stewart still
does a large amount of appraising of property for this company, of which he
is vice president. In politics he is a Republican. Mr. Stewart in 1878 was
made a ruling elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Morgantown, and in
1928, when he was reelected for another three year term, the conclusion of
half a century of continuous service was made the occasion for
congratulations on the part of his associates and fellow church members and
the adoption of a special tribute of appreciation by the congregation,
marking his long and faithful performance of duties, his loyalty and his
sincere Christian character as a churchman an
d layman. He was also twice elected moderator of the Grafton Presbytery and
is still serving as moderator.
        Professor Stewart married in 1878, at Morgantown, Miss Louise M.
Hayes, who died in 1911. He married in 1915 Sara Meredith, of Fairmont,
West Virginia, who finished her education in the college at Adrian,
Michigan, and has always been much interested in educational work. She also
graduated from the State Normal and the Fairmont Normal School, taught in
the grade schools at Fairmont and for eleven years in the Fairmont High
School, and was also an instructor in the Concord Normal School at Athens,
West Virginia, and the West Liberty Normal and the Fairmont Normal. Mrs.
Stewart is of Welch ancestry. her grandfather, William Meredith, born in
Wales about 1797, came to America in 1800, settling in the vicinity of
Hagerstown, Maryland, and later moving to Marion County, West Virginia,
where he operated a tavern on the Morgantown road. Her father, John Quincy
Adams Meredith, followed farming in Fairmont at the place known as Meredith
Springs, and was a justice of the peace and memb
er of the County Court and school board. He was born in 1829 and died in
1908. Mrs. Stewart's mother, Margaret Hall, was a daughter of Richard and
Rhoda Hall, for many years residents of Marion County, West Virginia.