Francis Laird Stewart and Margaret Harris

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Husband Francis Laird Stewart ^{1 2 3}

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           Born: 12 Jun 1831 - Murrysville, Westmoreland Co, PA 2 3
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         Father: Dr. Zachariah Gammell Stewart, M.D. (1805-1863) 2 3 4
         Mother: Jane Laird (1805-1879) 2 3 5 6

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       Marriage: 

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Wife Margaret Harris ^{7 8}

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Children

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1 M John F. Stewart ⁷

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2 M William L. Stewart ⁷

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3 F Nettie Stewart ⁷

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4 F Alice Stewart ⁷

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5 M Charles Stewart ⁷

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6 M Harrie Stewart ⁷

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General Notes: Husband - Francis Laird Stewart

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He was educated at Jefferson college from which he was graduated in the summer of 1852. After graduating he taught in an academy at Hunterstown, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and afterwards went to Jefferson City, Missouri, where he was engaged in teaching from 1856 to 1859. In the latter year he was compelled to return to Pennsylvania on account of fever and ague. He then taught for some time in the Female Seminary at Cannonsburg, but was compelled to relinquish it on account of ill-health. About March, 1861, he returned to Murrysville where he formed and instructed a few classes and founded "Laird Institute" which successfully maintained its existence for over forty-five years as an academy of the highest grade in the northern part of the county.
Mr. Stewart's taste and training befitted him for scientific research, especially in the de-partments of chemistry, geology and botany. Between 1865 and 1868 he investigated in a course of experiments extending over several years, the true value for sugar manufacture, of the then recently introduced sugar millet, or sorghum, ending in the discovery of a process, named after him, which became the foundation of all practical work for producing sugar from that source.
About 1870, as the result of private experiments to determine the nature and properties of natural gas obtained as it escaped from the earth near Murrysville, he published a statement calling attention for the first time to the great value of the gas for fuel for manufacturing purposes. He was led to form a theory of the origin of the gas which, in some of its main features is essentially the same as that which was afterwards broached by Prof. Mendelief, of Russia, and which now meets with general acceptance in Europe. This theory asserts the production of the gas to be continuous, and the result of well-known chemical and physical causes. The condition of the Murrysville field at the time was cited as giving abundant proof of the theory.
Mr. Stewart was also interested in the salt and soda and other chemical industries, and made important improvements in processes and machinery connected therewith.
In 1885 he undertook the most laborious and exacting work of his life, the practical demonstration of a discovery which he had made, that the development of sugar in the juice of the stems of maize or Indian corn can be largely increased by an artificial mode of treatment, so that the per cent. of sugar which it then would contain exceeds that of any other plant grown outside the tropics, not excepting the sugar beet, and only equalled by the southern cane.
This research was completed during 1906, and some of the results of it and the scientific and practical questions growing out of it, were the subject of a paper read by Mr. Stewart at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Toronto, Canada, which received marked attention, both in America and in Europe. He anticipated that sugar would soon be manufactured from the new source in all countries where Indian corn could be grown in larger quantity and at much less cost than from the sugar beet.
Mr. Stewart was the author of two works on the chemistry of sugar production, and of several papers and reports, some of which were embodied in government publications of the United States and Great Britain, and re-published in Europe and in the English Colonies. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and also of the Botanical Society of western Pennsylvania; was the original projector and promoter of the Turtle Creek Valley Railroad, was a member and an elder of the Murrysville Presbyterian church beginning in 1864, and was a stanch, old-time democrat. He was well informed in everything relating to the local history of his section of the county. [BHCWC, 700]

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General Notes: Wife - Margaret Harris

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from the Juniata valley, Pennsylvania
from Barre, Huntingdon Co, PA

1 George Dallas Albert, History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 619.

2 Samuel T. Wiley, Biographical and Historical Cyclopedia of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: John M. Gresham & Co., 1890.), Pg 700.

3 John W. Jordan, History of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Genealogical Memoirs, Vol. III (Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1906), Pg 93.

4 George Dallas Albert, History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 286, 619.

5 George Dallas Albert, History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 286.

6 John W. Jordan, History of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Genealogical Memoirs, Vol. II (Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1906), Pg 458.

7 Samuel T. Wiley, Biographical and Historical Cyclopedia of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: John M. Gresham & Co., 1890.), Pg 701.

8 John W. Jordan, History of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Genealogical Memoirs, Vol. III (Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1906), Pg 94.