iyiu-ia.il. J ^II 



were buried. They had their share in the land troubles which 

 arose in that part of the country in the eighteenth century. They 

 were weavers as well as farmers and the naturalist's grandfather 

 was once chased for his life by thieves when returning home after 

 selling his cloth in Belfast. Then came the political troubles of 

 1798 in which many families living in that district were involved. 

 Stewart's grandfather left Ballynure in that year and went to 

 America. He settled at Philadelphia. His son William married 

 Sarah Funston, a member of a family which had come from 

 England, another branch of which settled at Castlederg, Co. Tyrone. 

 The Funstons were Methodists, the Stewarts Presbyterians and 

 Seceders. William Stewart had a good business, weaving and 

 selling ginghams. He owned a large house in North Front Street, 

 Philadelphia, and here Samuel the Naturalist was born on the 5th 

 February, 1826, and two years later his only sister Margaret Ann, 

 now Mrs. Bayne, who survives him, and was his companion for a 

 considerable part of his life as he never married. The boy was 

 not robust and suffered from spitting of blood, and was thought 

 to be consumptive, and ordered to drink milk, wear flannels, and 

 live as much as possible in the open air ; but this was not correct, 

 though he suffered from attacks of dyspepsia more or less through 

 life, and was crippled by rheumatism in his later years. 



He attended a private school in Philadelphia, kept by a Mrs. 

 Lowry, where he learned the rudiments of letters, but ill-health 

 was a hindrance to progress, and schooling came to an end at the 

 age of eleven, the only regular education he was to receive. 



His school teacher sent him home one day with a written 

 statement to give to his parents that "there was one bad boy in the 

 school and he was called S. A. Stewart." Their mother died 

 when the children were young, and a business panic so affected 

 their father's trade that he gave it up and returned to Ireland in 

 June, 1837. A period of trial now set in for the family which had 

 been in comparative affluence, and Samuel and his sister had to 

 endure many hardships. 



