David Stuart (August 3, 1753 – October 1814) was an American physician and politician from Virginia, who was a correspondent of George Washington.
Stuart and his wife received the "Cedar Grove" plantation on the Potomac River as a wedding present.
Stuart served on the King George County Committee of Safety during the American Revolutionary War.
David Stuart served as rector of the same parish (then in Stafford County, Virginia and now known as Aquia Church) from 1722 until his death in 1749.
[13] In 1802, his brother Richard married the widow Margaret Robinson McCarty, whose husband held public office and owned operations plantations in Fairfax County, and his sister Ann in 1793 married William Mason, son of George Mason, whom Stuart in effect had replaced in the Virginia Ratification Convention described below.
His first farmed at Abingdon (plantation) which was in an area that the Commonwealth of Virginia temporarily ceded to create the federal city of Washington in 1790.
Several letters between the former president and Stuart, some of whose farming activities benefitted his stepchildren, as the residual beneficiaries of the dower slaves, discussed the gradual abolition of slavery, as well as white landowners who harassed free Black landowners, knowing that Virginia's law against allowing Blacks to testify meant that illegal actions could have no negative consequences.
Fairfax County voters elected and thrice re-elected Stuart as one of their representatives to the Virginia House of Delegates, and he served in that part-time position from 1785 until 1789.
[25] Stuart served alongside Alexandria lawyer Charles Simms, also a staunch Federalist and multi-term Fairfax County representative in the House of Delegates; George Mason had often represented Fairfax County in the House of Delegates and also served in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where the U.S. Constitution was drafted.
Thus Mason instead represented Stafford County at the convention, where he and Patrick Henry led the anti-Ratification forces.
[26]Federalist or ratification forces led by James Madison, John Marshall and Edmund Randolph, defeated the Mason/Henry resolution, 88—80.
[26] In 1791, President George Washington appointed Stuart to serve as a commissioner of the new Federal City to oversee the surveying of the new capital and construction of the public buildings.
[33] The Virginia General Assembly also named Stuart as one of Fairfax County's gentleman justices, normally a lifetime appointment.
[36] During their lifetimes, David and Eleanor Stuart, with their children, lived at three different plantations in Fairfax County: Abingdon, until 1791; Hope Park, until 1804; and Ossian Hall.
[39] His daughter stated he died at "Howard," the residence of his son-in-law Mr. Robinson” (Anne Calvert Stuart’s husband), in Alexandria.
[41] Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart died at her daughter's house in Georgetown, District of Columbia, in 1811, and was originally buried at "Effingham" plantation in Prince William County.
Her body was later moved to Page's Chapel in 1848, part of St. Thomas Church in Croom, Prince George's County, Maryland.