Steuart family

Steuart

Steuart family crest
Current region	Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
Earlier spellings	Stewart, Stuart.
Place of origin	Perthshire, Scotland
Members	George H. Steuart (planter) (1700-1784) George H. Steuart (militia general) (1790-1867) George H. Steuart (brigadier general) (1828-1903) Richard Sprigg Steuart (1797-1876)
Connected families	Calvert family
Estate	Dodon, Old Steuart Hall
Name origin and meaning	Stewards of Scotland

The Steuart family of Maryland was a prominent political family in the early History of Maryland. Of Scottish descent, the Steuarts have their origins in Perthshire, Scotland. The family grew wealthy in the early 18th century under the patronage of the Calvert family, proprietors of the colony of Maryland, but would see their wealth and status much reduced during the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.

George Hume Steuart (1700–1784) was an Edinburgh-educated physician, who settled in Annapolis in the Province of Maryland in c1721, where he established a medical practice. He married there, and became a tobacco planter, and politician.

Politically, Steuart's interests were closely aligned with those of the Calvert family, proprietors of the colony of Maryland. In 1742 Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore (1699–1751) sent his eldest but illegitimate son, Benedict Swingate Calvert, then aged around ten years old, to Annapolis and placed him in Steuart's care. Steuart evidently benefited from the Calvert family's patronage, as he later was appointed to a number of important Colonial offices.

However, as a wealthy landowner with estates in both Maryland and Scotland, Steuart was forced by the outbreak of the American Revolution to decide whether to remain loyal to the British Crown or to throw in his lot with the American rebels. Unable to remain neutral, in 1775 he sailed to Scotland, where he lived until his death in 1784. His sons however remained in Maryland, loyal to the fledgling United States of America.