I, William Hamilton STEWART (WHS), wrote this on May 10, 2025.

My email address is [email protected]

"wstewrt" is my user name at Ancestry.com

I am #143035 on the royal Stewart phylogenetic tree @  

http://www.ytree.net/DisplayTree.php?blockID=86 & at

https://www.yseq.net/product_reviews_info.php?products_id=62252&reviews_id=197

WHS' patriline is @

https://www.thepeerage.com/p74886.htm#i748858

WHS is a patrilineal 12th cousin 1x removed of Andrew STEWART, 14th Earl of Galloway @

https://www.allabouthistory.co.uk/History/Scotland/Paternal/Stewart.html & @

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Galloway

"the principal branch of Clan Stewart"

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Written on 8/16/2020 by William Hamilton STEWART:

The tombstone of WHS' fourth great grandfather James STEWART (1741-Oct. 2, 1829) is located in the one acre "McDonald cemetery" (now called the Stewart graveyard) @

https://www.google.com/maps/place//@34.5618353,-81.0774035,2299m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m8!1m7!3m6!1s0x88566dbad3e43eef:0xe7a3bb61d3a173c1!2sStover+Creek!8m2!3d34.5678498!4d-81.0312521!16s%2Fg%2F11bw7kf0qb

This cemetery is surrounded by land now or formerly owned by the family of Edward Mills on Heritage Road in Chester County SC. It is located on a slope in woods near the edge of a field about a hundred yards south of Bell Creek, near the boundary of Chester and Fairfield Counties. I do not know if the Mills family still owns that land. Its present owners may not even know where that cemetery is located.

I found a plat of a one acre square lot of that cemetery, possibly in the Court house of Chester or Fairfield County.

The only inscribed tombstones in the McDonald cemetery are those that mark the aforesaid James' grave. He was a veteran of the Revolutionary War so I tried to protect his original marble tombstone by placing behind it a second tombstone on which information about his military service is inscribed. I also drove four steel bars or rods called "rebar" (used to reinforce concrete) about three feet into the ground on each side of his head and foot stones, in order to mark and to protect them. About a foot long section of each four foot long and approximately one inch in diameter piece of rebar protrudes from the ground.

I discovered a list of the names and initials of some of the people who are buried there on a small piece of paper that I found in an unguarded trunk of papers that a genealogist donated to the Chester County library before she died. That a cousin of mine used to steal such documents from Court Houses, etc. made it almost impossible for me to prove that I descend from my fourth great grandfather James STEWART (~1740-1829).

Daniel McDonald settled near the Stover Creek area about 1745. I believe that he was one of the earliest settlers in that area, and that the McDonald cemetery was named after his family. The initials of those buried there may be inscribed on some of the small, leaf-covered and unhewn stones that mark their graves.

I haven't visited that cemetery in many decades. The limbs from trees that are growing near James' grave may have fallen and broken his tombstones.

The trees that grow in that cemetery will probably be harvested whenever the trees that grow on the surrounding land are. I doubt that the crews that harvest that timber will know where the cemetery is located. All of the stones that mark the graves in that cemetery may be considered nuisances and ignored or deliberately destroyed. People who cut the grass in cemeteries next to some churches have done likewise.

In the 1960s nobody knew who the descendants of my fourth great grandfather James STEWART were until my Bankhead kinfolk told me about the "Stewart" cemetery. I determined the geographical coordinates of James' grave (searching for them in my records might take days). I wanted to protect his grave from vandals so I never publicized them.

My 2nd great grandfather Civil War Veteran Thomas B. STEWART was one of James' grandsons. His and a Wilds family built the Longtown Presbyterian Church on land that they donated. Tom's grave is marked only by a slab of concrete that has no inscription. I doubt that anyone else knows where it is. I want to replace it with an inscribed tombstone. For decades I've been trying to obtain written permission from the officials of that church to no avail. Do they want to sell his plot for a few hundred dollars to someone else? My dogs seem to have more humanity, gratitude and common sense than people nowadays.

I recently identified some descendants of James' siblings, etc. thanks to autosomal DNA tests and Ancestry.com's ThruLines. Thanks to my Big Y NGS test I discovered that I inherited a mutation named S781. It occurs only in descendants of Sir John STEWART of Bonkyl. John was a son of the 4th High Steward of Scotland, a 9th proavus of King James 1st of England. See https://www.thepeerage.com/p514.htm#i5135

Nearly all of my genealogical research may be forgotten after I die. None of my kinfolk seem interested in ancestry. I don't expect any gratitude or benefits from anyone who is, or even for my grave to be marked by a tombstone.