Robert Stuart (February 19, 1785 – October 28, 1848) was a Scottish-born, Canadian and American fur trader, best known as a member of the first European-American party to cross South Pass during an overland expedition from Fort Astoria to Saint Louis in 1811.

Family history states that Robert Stuart was born in Strathyre, in the historic parish of Balquhidder, but grew up in Callander,[1] both towns in Perthshire, about 15 and 20 miles (24 and 32 km) northwest of Stirling, Scotland.

[2] Around 1807, he joined an uncle, David Stuart, in Montreal to work as a clerk in the fur trade for the Canadian North West Company.

After leaving supplies and traders at the newly created outpost, the ship and crew traveled north to Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island.

Continuing along the south side of the Snake, they reached the American Falls on September 5, Soda Springs on the 9th and arrived near the Idaho border on the 13th.

Presented to Astor and President James Madison, and published in France, the journal did not make the location of the South Pass widely known.

Thus, in 1856, Ramsay Crooks, one of Stuart's party, wrote a letter describing their journey:[5] "In 1811, the overland party of Mr. Astor's expedition [from St. Louis to Fort Astoria], under the command of Mr. Wilson P. Hunt, of Trenton, New Jersey, although numbering sixty well armed men, found the Indians so very troublesome in the country of the Yellowstone River, that the party of seven persons who left Astoria toward the end of June, 1812, considering it dangerous to pass again by the route of 1811, turned toward the southeast as soon as they had crossed the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, and, after several days' journey, came through the celebrated 'South Pass' in the month of November, 1812.

[3] In 1817 or 1819 (accounts vary), Stuart became manager of the American Fur Company's "Northern Department" based on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

By June 1834, Stuart placed funds in the hands of Ferry to settle in what would become Grand Haven and set up a land and lumber enterprise, sharing the profits.

[7] It is not entirely clear when Stuart began to invest in Detroit real estate, but around 1835–1836 he built a home and soon moved his family there.

The building has been made into a museum of the fur trading industry, covering the time period begun by French merchants, British businessmen, and Native Americans.