Stewart, James Duncan, 1824-1905

James Duncan Stewart was an attorney and a Confederate officer from Mississippi during the nineteenth century.

Born around 1824 in Mississippi, Stewart graduated from the University of Virginia in 1844. He studied law at Cambridge University and returned to Mississippi to practice law. Stewart reportedly served in the First Mississippi Regiment, under future Confederate president Jefferson Davis, during the Mexican-American War, from 1846 to 1848. After that war, he resumed his legal practice in Mississippi and owned a plantation. His legal practice and military experience boosted his popularity in the community, and he served a term in the Mississippi legislature in the late 1840s. By the late 1850s, he also served as president of the board of directors of the Mississippi State Hospital.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Stewart volunteered for Confederate service. He was appointed chief of ordnance for Mississippi, tasked with acquiring and issuing weapons and ammunition to Mississippi troop, and served in that capacity from 1863 to 1865. After the war, Stewart was briefly considered a candidate for governor of Mississippi, but he largely stayed out of politics during the Reconstruction era and ran a successful law firm with Thomas T. Swann in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1879, he was elected to the Mississippi Senate, and served a single term. In the 1880s, Stewart was appointed registrar of the U.S. land office in Jackson.

Stewart died on June 27, 1905. He was married to Amanda Yerger, who passed away in 1873. He had nine children. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi.

(Vicksburg Whig, Vicksburg, MS, January 25 1860; The Clarion, Jackson, MS, February 24, 1870; FindaGrave; “Col. James Duncan Stewart, (Planter),” Ryk Brown’s Genealogy Database and Stewarts of Balquhidder)

James Duncan Stewart belonged to the following social groups: