Alexander Stewart (d. 1828)
Alexander Stewart (d. 1828) was part of the Stewart family of Garth, a significant Highland family whose seat was Garth Castle in Perthshire. Stewart probably studied at St Andrews, and then trained for medicine at Edinburgh. He served as military surgeon in India c.1790-1796, probably serving in the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790-1792), the siege of Pondicherry (August 1793), and the capture of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1795. He may then have gone into private medical practice; he was living in Chelsea, London at the time of his death. His family had other far-reaching imperial connections. One brother, John Stewart, was the founder of the Garth Estate in Trinidad, a sugar plantation being worked by 45 enslaved people in 1828. Their elder brother, David Stewart (1772-1829), was an army officer who served in the Caribbean and Mediterranean; he rose to Major-General, and in 1829 was appointed Governor of St Lucia in the Windward Isles (but died shortly after his arrival). David Stewart corresponded with the University of St Andrews about Alexander Stewart’s bequest of £3,000 to create the Garth Bursaries.
Sources: List of Deeds (1891), p.71; UCL Slavery Database entries: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/estate/view/3747 and https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146649939; ODNB – David Stewart