Robert Stuart

Trader, born in Callander, Central, C Scotland, UK. He emigrated to Canada (1807) and joined the Pacific Fur Co (1810). He was active in the Astoria colony (1810–12) and headed the American Fur Co in the upper Great Lakes area (1820–34). He settled in Detroit and became superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan (1841–5).

Robert Stuart was born in Ireland in about 1812 to Thomas Stuart (of Whitehall, County Clare, and Lifford, County Limerick, the illegitimate son of Thomas Smyth and brother of Major-General Charles Stuart). In 1873 he was made Consul-General for the Russian ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof, and was based at Odessa - at this time his Private Secretary was his nephew, William Horwood Stuart.

In 1856, Major Stuart led an expedition to the summit of Mount Ararat, along with Major Fraser, Rev.

The Bermuda Sun newspaper reported in 1999 that a letter from a Major Stuart to his wife, bearing unusually marked Bermuda stamps and dated 4 June 1874 was to be auctioned and would probably fetch nearly £10,000.

Stuart retired in 1883 and settled in Leamington Spa, where he died on 17 June 1901. Two of his nephews, William Horwood Stuart (1857-1906) and Charles Leader Justice Stuart (1869-1885), the sons of his brother the Rev. William Stuart (Vicar of Mundon, Essex (1882-1889) and Rector of Hazeleigh, Essex (1889-1896)), also entered the diplomatic service and served around the Black Sea, although both also had their careers cut short: Charles drowned in the Danube at Brăila in Romania in 1885 and William was murdered at Batum in Georgia in 1906.