Alexander Stewart (1746–1831)


Alexander Stewart, known as Alexander Stewart of Ards, was an Irish landowner and Member of Parliament.

Birth and origins

Alexander was born on 26 March 1746 in Ireland. He was one of seven children and the fifth son of Alexander Stewart and his wife Mary Cowan. His father's family was Ulster Scots and came from County Donegal. His father had bought the Newtownards and Comber estates in County Down and lived at Mount Stewart, near Newtownards. His father also still was an alderman of Londonderry in 1760. His grandfather, Colonel William Stewart, had commanded one of the two companies of Protestant soldiers that Derry admitted into town when Mountjoy was sent to Derry by Tyrconnell before the start of the siege. Alexander's mother's family also was Ulster Scots. She was a daughter of John Cowan, alderman of Derry and sister of Robert Cowan, Governor of Bombay. His parents married on 30 June 1737 in Dublin.

Ards House

In 1782, after his father's death in the preceding year, Alexander, probably using some money from the inheritance, bought the Ards House and some surrounding lands near Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, for £13,250 from William Wray and started to live there. He and his heirs were therefore known as the Stewarts of Ards. The Ards House was demolished in the early 1960s, but the wooded park in which it stood still exists and is known as the Ards Forest Park.

Marriage

On 2 October 1791 Alexander Stewart of Ards, as he was now, married Mary Moore, daughter of Charles Moore, 1st Marquess of Drogheda and granddaughter of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford. Mary was the niece of Sarah Frances Seymour-Conway, the first wife of Alexander's eldest brother Robert, Lord Londonderry.
Their children who reached adulthood included three sons:
  1. Alexander Robert Stewart, succeeded him;
  2. Charles Moore, became a minister of a church, probably Presbyterian; and
  3. John Vandeleur of Rock Hill.

    Politics and later life

He was appointed High Sheriff of Donegal for 1791–92.
He sat as member of parliament in the Irish Parliament in 1800–1801; and for the UK Parliament in 1814–1818. He was elected for the Londonderry County constituency of the Irish Parliament in 1800, sat for Londonderry County for one month and then exchanged it for the borough of Thomastown for which he sat until Irish Parliament was abolished due to the Acts of Union in 1801.
On 19 July 1814 he was elected for the Londonderry constituency of the U.K. Parliament to replace his nephew Sir Charles Stewart who had on 1 July 1814 been raised to the peerage as Baron Stewart. He thus served as "a family stopgap" who "supported government silently". He sat for the constituency for four years until the 1818 general election, when his son Alexander-Robert was elected, having come of age.
Alexander Stewart of Ards died in 1831.