By Robin Montgomery
Photo by Ruben Borjas Jr
On Saturday, February 8th, the environs of Montgomery’s Nat Hart Davis
Museum glistened with pride as, before a standing room only audience,
the city’s mayor, Sara Countryman, introduced the honorable Jack
Shepherd to speak. Shepherd’s topic: Montgomery’s favorite son, Dr.
Charles Bellinger Stewart. In addition to the mayor and several other
city officials, the grand assemblage included Billy Ray Duncan,
president of the Montgomery History Society and his council along with
a sampling of Stewart’s descendants to the fourth generation. All
exhibited high expectations for the prestigious event.
Those expectations found resonance in the grand presentation of the
designated speaker, the honorable Jack Shepherd. In period dress,
Shepherd rendered a marvelous review of the amazing Dr. Stewart’s
life. The review revealed that from his birth on February 6th, 1806,
in Charleston, South Carolina, until his burial in the Montgomery
Texas Cemetery in 1885, the saga of Dr. Charles B. Stewart embraced
his whole adopted state.
Arriving in Texas in 1830, two years later he participated in the
Battle of Velasco. From there, he played pivotal roles in the two
preliminary governments paving the way for Texas Statehood. These were
the Permanent Council and the Provisional Council, in both of which he
served as secretary, making him effectively Texas’s first secretary of
state. Continuing his role as a major player in the birth of Texas, on
March 2nd, 1836, at Washington on the Brazos he became the first
signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence!
It was upon completion of this major feat that he quickly made his
mark on Montgomery, rushing to our community to marry Julia Shepperd!
Thus, did his link to our growing city begin. However, Charles Stewart
had just begun to bring pride to our community. He went on to
represent Montgomery County at the Constitutional Convention of 1845
marking the framework for Texas’s move from a republic to a state of
the United States.
Grand as was all this- and much more. Perhaps Stewart’s most notoriety
centers on an event in 1839. During that “banner” year, he created
what became the official flag of Texas, which survived to carry over
into Texas Statehood. On the 30th of May 1997 Texas Governor George W.
Bush celebrated the event by signing House Resolution 1123 which read
in part: “Dr. Charles Stewart of Montgomery County created this
inspirational banner.”
The fabulously growing town of Montgomery has much for which to be
proud. As the grand gathering at the Nat Hart Davis Museum testified,
high on that list is its favorite “historical son,’ Charles Bellinger
Stewart, statesman, doctor and pharmacist of our community for some
fifty years.
If the full content does not display, visit the article originally published on this site
