Charles Stewart is one of my more quiet ancestors. He was born in Charlotte, Washington, Maine on 1 July 1822, married Elida Ann Hicks in 1850 and farmed his land in the village next door, Meddybemps, Maine.

I met his granddaughter, Bertha Stuart Eldridge, in the 1980s. She had memories of her grandparents and described the day Charles died. He came in early from working in the field, took a nap on the sofa, and died soon after. It sounded as if he had a stroke or heart attack.

Charles Stewart, aka Stuart, was my next full-text search project and I immediately learned one new fact about Charles. He served as a selectman in Meddybemps. A selectman is, more or less, a town council member.

The handwriting is poor and the AI transcription very garbled because of it, but apparently the town of Meddybemps was sued for non-payment of a debt. As a selectman, Charles Stewart was one of the men ordered to pay up.

The important part for me is that I had no idea that Charles ever served as a town official!

The receipt is also of great interest to me because I think Charles wrote it out and signed it:

Notice that Mr. Bridges’ signature is in different handwriting, but the details plus “Charles Stewart” at the bottom and “C. Stewart” scrawled on an angle all look to be written by the same person.