From Perthshire to Puslinch
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Welcome to my family research page on the pioneer Stewart families of Puslinch Township, Wellington County, Ontario. This page covers my own family of Stewart ancestors as well as other Stewart famillies from the Puslinch area. This page can be arrived at from two different sources: my own family history pages, and the Puslinch Historical Society website (or other Puslinch related links). A book version of From Perthshire to Puslinch: The Pioneers Stewart Families of Puslinch Township is available for purchase from the Puslinch Historical Society.
If you have come to this page from my own family history website and you wish to continue following the same family line then my family is referred to here as the "Comrie Stewarts". Please follow any references to the Comrie Stewart family in order to remain with our family line. You should also follow the links to Tait of Puslinch, Ord of Puslinch, and Gillespie of Puslinch as these are all related lines. Feel free to roam around the rest of the site, but please understand that the Mountsberg Stewarts, the Crieff Stewarts, and the Other Stray Stewarts are NOT our family.
If you have come to this site from the Puslinch Historical Society website or another Puslinch related link, then this is your start page for Stewart research in the Puslinch area. This page endeavours to present as much information as is currently known by the author on ALL families with the surname of Stewart who were pioneer settlers in Puslinch Township.
In the course of this research project I have been able to account for about 80% of the Stewarts who lived in Puslinch prior to 1900. I have identified the three largest Stewart families as:
All three of these families emigrated from Perthshire, Scotland to Puslinch, Ontario around the year 1835. They settled on property in Puslinch and their descendants remained in the area for generations.
 | Note: I have defined "principal" families as those families who owned property in Puslinch, lived there long enough to pass the property on to a second generation and who have family members buried in one of the Puslinch cemeteries. |
With a little further research I was able to show that the Mountsberg Stewarts and the Crieff Stewarts both came not only from the same county of Perthshire, but also from the same parish of Fortingall. Though I have not been able to discover a connection between these two families back in Scotland, it is possible. Thus nearly all of the early Stewart households of Puslinch can be accounted for in these three principal families.
I hope that other Stewart researchers may find this website, or it's printed book version, of some value in researching their own histories.
The first of the pioneer Stewart families of Puslinch that I will present are the Stewart family that I have chosen to call the "Comrie Stewarts". This is my own family. The Comrie Stewarts are so-named because they emigrated from the parish of Comrie in Perthshire, Scotland, however their roots lay to the west in Balquhidder Parish on the west end of Loch Earn. The most recognizable Puslinch residents of this family would include Peter Stewart, long-time elder at Duff's Church, and his son Neil Stewart.
This family's roots can be traced back to the notorious Ardvorlich Stewarts of Perthshire, as preserved in the book A Legend of Montrose, by Sir Walter Scott. The noble ancestry of the Ardvorlich family can be traced back to King Robert II, the first Stewart King of Scotland, and beyond.
More on this family can be found here.
The Mountsberg Stewarts are so-called because they settled in the Mountsberg area of Flamborough Township in Wentworth County, which, in the 19th century, was actually part of Puslinch Township. The Mountsberg Stewarts were also members of Duff's Presbyterian Church in Puslinch and many members of this family were buried in Crown Cemetery in Puslinch. This family is believed to have come from Fortingall, Perthshire, Scotland.
This family was later related by marriage to the Comrie Stewarts through the marriage of Margaret Stewart, a daughter of Peter Stewart of the Comrie family, and her husband Harvey Alexander Stewart, a grandson of Alexander Stewart of the Mountsberg family.
The best-known member of this family is probably Alexander Stewart who built the log cabin in Mountsberg, which still bears his name engraved over the doorpost. Their farm remained in the Stewart family until 1966.
More on this family can be found here.
The Crieff Stewarts are so-called because they settled in the Crieff area of Puslinch. They emigrated from Loch Rannoch in the parish of Fortingall, Perthshire, Scotland sometime in the 1830s. Probably the most well-known member of this family would have been Hugh Stewart who ran the Crieff post office and general store.
More on this family can be found here.
Another Stewart family came to Puslinch from Argyll, Scotland by way of Perthshire, Scotland. This is the family of Duncan Stewart of Kintyre, Argyll, Scotland who married in Kilmadock, Perthshire, Scotland to Margaret (Mary) Gillespie and moved to Puslinch in 1832. Their genealogy has eluded researchers for years, but has now finally be sorted out. Please refer to the Duncan Stewart of Argyll Page.
There are a few other Stewart families who were smaller in number and who also held property in Puslinch, but were not connected to any of the three principal Perthshire families. I have tried to include as much information as I have available on these families in the section noted as Other Stray Stewart Families. These families are "stray" only in that they do not fit into my arbitrarily chosen principal families. They are no less pioneer Stewart families of Puslinch.
If you are researching any Stewarts who lived in Puslinch Township then you will want to check the page on Stewart burials. This page contains a list of all Stewarts who were buried in the Presbyterian cemeteries in Puslinch. It does not contain a listing of all Stewarts buried in all of the Puslinch cemeteries as this would be quite an undertaking (perhaps someday I'll take it on). Since all of the principal Stewart families presented herein were in fact Presbyterian there was not much call to look at other cemeteries.
If you don't find your Puslinch Stewarts here, please contact me. It may be that I have come across your family since my last update, or it may be that you have some new information for me to include in a future update.
This work is accurate to the best of my knowledge and ability. I am an amateur part-time researcher, not a professional. It is quite possible that there are errors in this work. I will also acknowledge that I have certainly made greater efforts for accuracy in researching my own family and less so with the Stewarts that are not related to me. Where possible I have included references to indicate source documents and to explain my conclusions. If you find errors in this work I encourage you to contact me so that those errors are not perpetuated for future readers.
I wish to acknowledge the assistance of the Puslinch Historical Society, in particular the late Anna Jackson for her extensive knowledge of Puslinch history. The Puslinch Historical Society has an excellent website with literally dozens of family trees submitted by Puslinch researchers and information on the early history of the pioneer settlers.
Much of the research presented herein is my own original research, however in the course of researching my family I have bumped into many people who have been researching related lines. Their research and work may be found herein also. In particular:
| The late Anna Jackson, of Puslinch, for her research on the Stewarts of Crieff (scroll to page 206 of link). |
| Marjorie Clark for her research on the descendants of Alexander Stewart of Mountsberg, found in the genealogy of the Kennedy family, and for the history of the early Badenoch Settlers of Puslinch. |
| The late Llewella McIntyre and all the other Fellow Researchers who have contributed their research. |
| Description | Location |
| Puslinch Historical Society | http://puslinch.bravepages.com/ |
| Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid | http://www.islandnet.com/ocfa/ |
| Ontario GenWeb | http://welcome.to/ontariogenweb |
| Puslinch Library | http://www.puslinch.net/library.html |
| Ontario GenWeb Census Project | https://sites.rootsweb.com/~ongenpro/census/ |
| 1871 Ontario Census (heads of house only) | http://130.15.161.100/census/index.html |
| Wellington County GenWeb | https://sites.rootsweb.com/~onwellin/pioneers/1pioneers.htm |
For more information on
any individual person featured on this page,
please:
1. click on the INDEX button below,
2. then select the first letter of the surname you are looking for.
The index button will take you to my searchable GEDCOM database hosted by RootsWeb's World Connect Project. This allows you to download my GEDCOM in 10-generation chunks. Then you can import my data directly into your own genealogy program without having to retype it.
= This person has known descendants.
ABT = "about" and is used in three ways:
Where it precedes a precise date of birth, such as "ABT 3 DEC 1855", then it means that the person was baptized on 3 DEC 1795, but his/her exact date of birth is unknown.
Where it precedes a semi-precise date of birth with the month only given, such as "ABT DEC 1855", then that means that the birth is recorded in the civil birth registrations for the quarter ending with that month. Thus the person's birth was registered sometime between the beginning of October 1855 and the end of December 1855, but no baptism record has been found nor any more precise birth record.
Where it precedes a year only, such as "ABT 1855", then it means that there is no information on the person's birth date at all and an educated guess has been made that he/she was probably born sometime around 1855.
Please post your questions, comments, corrections, or additional information to:
RYK
BROWN'S GENEALOGY DISCUSSION FORUM
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This page was last updated on November 07, 2008
