(1793-8 May 1881), merchant. Born on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Parents: Ranald Stewart and his wife Isabella McLeod. Neil Stewart came to Canada in 1816, when his mother emigrated with her ten children (Ranald the father had died by this time). He spent his first years in Canada in GC, where the Stewarts had settled on Lots 26 and 27 of the 4th Concession of Lancaster. (These Stewarts are sometimes referred to as the Lancaster Stewarts, and were closely related to the Stewarts of Stewarts Glen, further north in GC.) Neil Stewart moved in 1825 from GC to a farm at Vankleek Hill; another account, not necessarily inconsistent, has him employed at Vankleek Hill in 1819. At Vankleek Hill, he was a clerk in a store and afterwards a merchant on his own account. Also, he was the first postmaster of Vankleek Hill, a JP, county treasurer, and crown land agent. During the Rebellion of 1837-1838, he was active in rallying local support for the Crown. He wrote from Vankleek Hill on 16 Dec. 1837 to his brother William Stewart, “A great political meeting was held at my house 10 days ago from 700 to 800 attended which showed our opponents in this quarter their own insignificance.”

     He was a member of the House of Assembly for the Province of Canada from 1844 to 1847, representing Prescott County. He and his brother William Stewart of Bytown were in the House of Assembly at the same time. Neil Stewart was defeated in the election of 1847. Neil Stewart was certainly a man of substance and influence in the Vankleek Hill area, and presumably he had GC connections that extended far beyond the Stewarts of his own family who continued to live in Lancaster Township. However, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that he was, as he has been called, “a political leader of the Scots in Glengarry,” or “generally regarded as the leader of the Glengarry Scots.” (Woods 103, Campbell 165, 179) His name, in fact, comes up only rarely in the contemporary sources relating to the activities of the powerful in GC in his time. He was married (1) on 15 March 1828 to Alice McCann (d. 15 Dec. 1834) (five children), and (2) in 1840 to Anne MacLeod. (no children) His daughter Isabella married Hugh McLennan, the son of John (Squire) McLennan, and through this connection he was the grandfather of Willliam McLennan the author and of Senator John Stewart McLennan (1853-1939). Neil Stewart was also the brother of Mrs Marion Stewart Mcdonald and was the great-uncle of William Stewart, the blind lawyer of Lancaster, and he was the great-great-grandfather of Lilias Newton (1896-1980), the Canadian portrait painter.

Campbell (1990), 164-217 (a detailed geneal. history of the Lancaster Stewarts) (portrait) * Thomas 565 & 569: biographical * MacMillan, Kirk, 401-404 (portrait) * Brault: index * MacKinnon: index * Forman, I, 105, 112 * letter 16 Dec. 1837: printed Glengarry Life (1980) * Shirley E. Woods, Jr., Ottawa: the Capital of Canada (1980), various refs. * Lovell 1857 564 * William D. Reid, Marriage Notices of Ontario (1980) 231