Descendants of Charles Stewart of Atholl

The Stewart branch of the family probably originated in Blair Atholl in Perthshire. The earliest evidence appears as late as 1811. This is a marriage entry in the Blair Atholl and Strowan Old Parochial Register showing that John Stewart married Margaret MacGlashan on 17 November. John was 'in Glaicnacaisardoch'. This homestead was not shown on the maps of the period and no other mention of the name has been found.
See notes at foot of page.

Margaret was ‘in Shireglas’, a large house on the south bank of the River Garry.
There was a similar entry in the Dull OPR, Dull being the parish on the west bank of the River Garry where Margaret - she was known as Kate - lived, and probably worked as a servant, at Shierglass.

The entries do not give the names of the couple’s parents. However, Margaret’s birthplace was given as Midlothian in the 1861 Census for Blair Atholl. An IGI entry confirms that she was born on 16 June 1782 to Peter MacGlashan and Isabell Robertson at Canongate, Edinburgh. Peter was a flax dresser, one who prepared flax yarn for the spinning machine. He married Isabell on 13 August 1775. The Edinburgh Marriage Register gives the church as Lady Yester’s, in High Wynd.

John Stewart’s father and mother are revealed in his death certificate dated 19 September 1855. If his age at death - 66 - is to be believed, he was born in 1789 to Charles Stewart, a mason, and Janet Campbell at Craggan, a group of cottages on the Lude estate.
See Thomson's 1827 map.
Unfortunately, there are no records, among the many John Stewarts born at the time, which would confirm his birth.
And no records of his parents’ marriage have been found.
In an effort to track John and his ancestors, records culled from various sources are discussed (and speculated upon) in the notes below.

Being a mason, John would likely have travelled widely for work. In 1813 he was in the cathedral town of Dunkeld, where Kate gave birth to their firstborn child, Charles. Three others were born there but, sadly, all died.
By 1819 the family was back in the Blair Atholl - at Balintoul, where Isabella was born.
By 1854 John was probably in poor health and unable to work. From 18 March his wife received quarterly charity payments of 10s from the Kirk. These continued up to her death in 1860.

John Stewart’s children

Charles (b 1813) survived to found a line that took the Stewarts to Canada. He was a mason, like his father. By 1846, he had made his way to Auchterarder, along with his brother John. While there, he married Janet Stewart and shortly afterwards set up home in Perth. He died there in 1889. There were 2 boys and 3 girls, one of whom - Margaret - married a joiner called Finlay McColl and moved to Kelvinside, Glasgow, starting a lineage that ended up in Victoria, BC.

Ann, born in 1815 in Dunkeld, only lived for a year.

Twins came next, born in 1816 in Dunkeld, but only survived for a day.

There are no records of the last three births in the Old Parish Registers:

Isabella was born in Blair Atholl around 1819.

John was born around 1821.

Ann was born around 1824. She was recorded in Ballentoul in 1841, but thereafter disappears from the record.

John Stewart (b 1821)

The 1841 census shows the Stewart family living in Ballentoul, a township just across the River Tilt from Blair Atholl. A 24 year old tailor called Charles Gray lived next door and two years later, he married Isabella Stewart (b 1819). The pair lived at his tailor’s business in Blair Atholl, producing 6 children.

John Stewart was a Journeyman Mason, so would have moved around the county in search of work. While in Auchterarder in 1847 he married Jane McAinsh. Jane was born around 1826 in Fowlis Wester, the third daughter of Alexander McAinsh and Isabella Maxton. Alexander came from a line of village shoemakers, while Isabella came from Dollar, Clackmannanshire. The family had probably moved to Perth by 1848 - all 6 children were born there.

John died in 1883, while Jane survived until 1894.

John Stewart’s children

Isabella, born in 1848, has not been positively identified in the 1871 and 1881 census records. It seems certain that, like many a poor Scottish girl, she headed for London in the late 1860s to look for work in service. In January 1881, while living in Chelsea, she had a son called Russell Stewart Sime. The father, William Sime, a carpenter, hung around long enough for the baptism of the child in March but probably vanished soon afterwards. By 1888, mother and child had returned to Perth, where Isabella married David Kemp, a carter, in a Free Church ceremony. Russell, however, was adopted by Isabella’s parents, taking the Stewart surname. When her mother Jane died in 1894, he seems to have moved in with Isabella’s sister Maria in Kinnoull Street, Perth. Isabella and David had probably gone to work at Ochtertyre House near Crieff. At some point they became known as Russell Sime’s official parents. When he married Isabella Smeaton in 1909, Russell was an ironmoulder, described as the son of Isabella Kemp.
Isabella died at Ochtertyre in 1920. Russell died in Glasgow in 1939.

Jane, born in 1851, died of TB in 1870.

John was born in 1854 in Perth.

Maria, known as Hannie, was born in 1856 with the unusual middle name of Hannon. She was a silk finisher who married a Postman called William Reid at a Temperance hotel in Perth in 1891. She underestimated her age by 6 years on the marriage entry! She died in Perth in 1927.

Alexander McAinsh was one of the few members of the family to make good. Born in 1859, he started as a message boy, then a letter carrier, eventually becoming an Assistant Inspector of Postmen in Perth. He married Isabella McGregor in 1894 and had two children, Jane and Alexander. He died of a stomach ulcer in 1908.

Jessie, born in 1865, married a house painter called John Nairn in Perth in 1885 and had 2 children. The couple went to Dublin with their surviving child, Jane (Jeannie). John died of cholecystitis in 1910. Jessie got married again in 1919 to Alexander Innes Gordon who was, curiously, another decorator. He died in 1923, not in Dublin, but in Mansfield, Notts. Jessie died in Dublin in 1938.

John and Jane had a seventh son, the adopted Russell Sime. It is not known when or why he came to Perth, but he was born in 1881 in London, the son of William Sime, a joiner. After Jane’s death, he moved in with his step-sister Isabella, who was living with her sister Maria in Kinnoull Street, Perth. By the time of his marriage to Isabella Smeaton in 1909, he was an ironmoulder, described as the son of Isabella Kemp.

John Stewart

John was born in 1854, the year before his father’s death. He was a quarrelsome man and, judging by his wedding photograph (which no longer exists), a tall (6ft), severe and ugly one with staring eyes, a squint and big feet. He was a drinking man who was not much liked by his children. He had a range of occupations listed in the various censuses, from Despatch Clerk to Timekeeper and Furniture Salesman. He probably began working for the Scottish Cooperative Society in Perth, transferring first to Dundee, where he married Elisabeth Inches in 1876, then to Edinburgh and finally to Glasgow as a manager in the Drapery Department. The couple had 10 children, 5 girls and 5 boys. His drinking seems to have led to his demotion and eventual dismissal from the Coop.

He died in 1912 in a Paisley asylum of General Paralysis of the Insane.

John Stewart’s children

Elizabeth Maxton Stewart, born in Dundee in 1877, took her middle name from her great grandmother on the McAinsh side. She also went into the Coop (she remained unmarried) and became their first female buyer (in gloves).

She died in Glasgow in 1959.

Georgina Stewart was born in Edinburgh in 1879. She appears as George (M) on her birth certificate, suggesting an error of classification, which was only officially corrected in 1952: for “George” substitute Georgina; for “M” substitute F. She married a butcher called James Johnston in 1900 and had 3 girls before they separated. She lived in the Dundee area and was said to have brought up her daughters on her own - although their father did make a reappearance for the 1921 census. James, the eldest of at least 11 children born to Peter Charlton Johnston and his 3 wives, disappeared from the record thereafter and his fate is unknown. Georgina died in Uddingston, Glasgow in 1966.

Her daughter Elizabeth Inches was born in 1902 and married Stephen Ponsford in Dunfermline in 1922. All seven of their children were born in Broughty Ferry. With their youngest, Patricia, they emigrated to New Zealand onboard RMS Ruahine on 23 April 1963. They lived at Porirua, Wellington, where Elizabeth died in 1975 and Stephen in 1988.

Georgina’s middle daughter Jeannie McAinsh Stewart was born in Falkirk in 1905 and married Gerald McHugh in 1928. After he died in 1960, she married William Peter in Broughty Ferry in 1969. He died in 1978, while Jeannie lived to 90, dying in in 1995.

The youngest daughter Georgina Stewart was born in Broxburn, west of Edinburgh, in 1908. She married John Banner in Glasgow in 1929 and had 4 children. John died in 1989, while Georgina died in Uddingston in 1996.

John Inches Stewart was born in 1881 in Glasgow. He started his working life as a Mason, after his grandfather. He signed up with the Royal Horse & Field Artillery in 1899 and was sent to fight in the Second Boer War in 1901 and 1902. He drove the horses that pulled the great artillery pieces to the front. On his return to Glasgow, he was promoted to Corporal and trained as a Bombardier. According to family recollection, he contracted some kind of disease in South Africa. This may have had a grain of truth – he died of skin cancer in Glasgow in 1913. He never married.

Alexander McAinsh Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1884. He trained on Clydeside as a ship’s upholsterer and went to Liverpool to look for work. He may have been in a reserved occupation that saved him from being called up. In 1918 he married his landlord's daughter, Dorothy Allen, who was 13 years his junior. They raised 3 girls and 2 boys. He died in Bootle in 1960, while Dorothy died in 1986.
Their daughter Dorothy married Wilfred Hignett in 1939 and died in 1999.
Their son Alan married Elsie Westbury in 1945 and died in 2005.
Their daughter Jean, who was blind, married Ronald Jones in 1948 and died in 2004. There were no offspring.
Their son John married Joan Tomey in 1959 and became a bank manager. There were probably 3 children. He died in Crewe in 2016.
Their youngest daughter Margaret Teresa Stewart was doing her nursing training at Guy's Hospital in 1954 when she met Roy Clark, a medical student who would later become an anaesthetist. Roy was the son of Raymond Clark, a well-known cellist. They married in London in 1956 and sailed to New York 3 years later, settling in Portland, Oregon. Aside from their hospital work, they ran a home care business. The couple had two sons, Timothy and Graham, but divorced in 1979. Margaret remarried in 1981 - to a carpenter called Raymond L Pease - but they divorced sometime before 2003. She may have subsequently married a Canadian university professor called Maurice Stewart.

Jane McAinsh Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1887. A Cash Girl at the Scottish Coop, she met William Francis Hamilton there and married him in 1914. They had 2 boys and 2 girls, although one girl survived for only a few weeks.

She died in Glasgow in 1969.

Thomas Ogilvie Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1889. A railway clerk, he married Janet Cannon in 1916 and had two sons. He died in Glasgow in 1931 of a lung tumour, even though he was a non-smoker.

His widow remarried in 1933 and died in Glasgow in 1939.

Their second son Charles Athole, named after the uncle who was killed at Loos, was born in 1919 and died of meningitis at 13 months.

John Ogilvy, known as Ian, was born in 1918, but disappeared from Glasgow in the mid-1930s. Some of his relatives thought he died in his teens of TB.
In fact he had enlisted in the RASC as a Signalman in 1934 (by lying about his age). By 1936 he was in Coventry, a Trooper in the Royal Tanks Corps. In 1939 he married Francesca Geoffrey-Smith in South Tidworth, an army base in Wiltshire where they were both stationed. Francesca was born in Buenos Aires to a university lecturer in English. Her sister Bride was a nun, Mother Bridget, who became headmistress of several Catholic schools, in particular the well-known St Mary's School in Ascot.
By 1941 John was a Corporal and a year later an Instructor, driving Churchill tanks and lorries. He received a severe reprimand for speeding in 1942. Soon after being sent to Normandy in 1944, he became ill and was permanently discharged from the army.

On 30 May 1948 John, with his wife and two daughters, arrived in Buenos Aires onboard the SS Rippingham Grange, a refrigerated cargo ship. He was an engineer and was, presumably, starting a job arranged through his wife's family connections.

But less than 2 years later, on 20 April 1950, Francesca and the girls disembarked in London from the RMMV Highland Brigade and made for Leamington Spa, where they set up home.

John Ogilvie Stewart is presumed to have returned to his family at a later date. He worked as a Midlands Electricity Board driver and later became a transport manager for Seeboard in Deal, Kent. He died of a burst ulcer in Dover Hospital in 1973.

Isabella Kemp Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1892. Known as Bella, she was pressurised into becoming the family's housekeeper after her parents died in 1909 and 1912. She escaped by falling pregnant and marrying Robert Rennie in 1915. Bob was a spirit salesman at the time. It is not known if he was called up for military service. By 1922 he was unemployed. Elizabeth, his sister-in-law, showed him an advert for jobs in Canada and offered to pay his fare.
On 3 August 1923, with £3 in his pocket, Bob* sailed to Canada, intending to settle in Winnipeg and find work as an agricultural labourer.
Bella followed a year later with their 3 girls - Elizabeth (known as Elsie or Lynn), Jean (known as Jeanette) and Isabella (known as Margo or Margot). They sailed from Glasgow on the SS Athenia's maiden voyage to Quebec, heading for Regina, Saskatchewan. A son, Robert Stewart Rennie, was born there, either in Montague St or Wallace St, in 1928 or 29. His father Bob was a process worker at Imperial Oil's refinery, earning $1680 a year (in 1931).
After 1935, he was said to have lost his job, at which point the family returned to Glasgow to beg for support from Bella's sister Elizabeth.
Her other sister, Jane, was not impressed: the Rennies, she declared, had never bothered to stay in touch when they were in Canada.

Robert eventually got well-paid work in Bahrain.
In 1938 Bella and her son Robert were onboard the SS California bound for Bombay. Presumably they disembarked in Bahrain to join Robert. But Bella hated the climate and refused to stay.
So in 1940 she and her son sailed, via Calcutta, to Los Angeles. They returned to Canada, possibly to Toronto, where her sister Lynn lived. They were supported by funds remitted from Bahrain.
In 1944 Robert sailed to Baltimore onboard the SS Mark Hanna and joined his family in Toronto. He was a refinery foreman.
How the Rennies ended up in Portland, Oregon is not known. Bella died there (in Tigard) in 1969.
Robert died in 1977 and was interred in the Lincoln Memorial Park.

* Robert Rennie's document trail is of interest because of its quirkiness: every time his name appeared on passenger manifests or immigration forms his age / year of birth was incorrectly given - usually as 1898 instead of 1894. Perhaps his Canadian passport had the wrong birth date and, during 30 years of travelling, was never corrected. On his official birth record of 23 February 1894, his parents' date of marriage was incorrectly given as 16 April 1893. Actually, it was 10 June 1890. When he married Isabella Stewart in 1915, the official record noted his mother as Margaret Campbell. Actually, she was a step-mother of sorts (she was not married to his father): his birth mother, Christina Smith, died in 1905. In the 1901 census for Portobello in Edinburgh, his father, who was also called Robert, was listed as William. His father was known as Robert Rainy in the Glasgow electoral registers. On a US immigration form in 1944, his wife was given as Ethel. On another US immigration form in 1951 Robert declared that he had landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia in October 1920; but on his Canadian immigration form of August 1923, he said he had never lived in Canada before. Unfortunately, there are no shipping records that would confirm the 1920 event.

Isabella Kemp Rennie's children

(Lynn) married Capt Donald Layfield in Ontario after the War and had 2 sons. Her husband worked for Monsanto chemicals and later for a prosperous company that made cab fairings, founded by his son Brian. Donald died at the age of 92 in Oakville in 2009, 2 years after the death of the couple's first-born son, Ian. Lynn herself died in 1989.
Jeanette married a British Columbian sailor called Frank Russ in 1942 in Toronto, where she lived. Russ, a Petty Officer Telegraphist, was killed when his ship, the destroyer HMCS St Croix, was torpedoed whilst on convoy duty in the Bay of Biscay on 20 September 1943. In 1952 Jeanette married Sherwood S Stutz, a US army major in Carson City and went to live in College, Fairbanks. Their first child, Susan, was born in 1954 in Christian, Kentucky and the second, Douglas, was born in 1956 in Oregon. The couple divorced before 1960. Jeanette died in Portland in 1996.
Isabella (Margot) married Paul Burgner in Multnomah in 1944. He was a naval officer who later became a doctor. They had no children. After they divorced in 1971, Margot retired to Palm Springs but returned to Portland, where she died in 2010.
Robert Stewart ran a successful truck accessory business after retiring from a career with a newsprint company. He died in Toronto in 2009.

Charles Athole Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1894. Reputedly the best-looking member of the family, he volunteered as a Private in the Seaforth Highlanders and was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

Maria Reid Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1895. The family knew her as Myra, though she preferred to be called Jean. She is thought to have eloped in 1914 with David Brown, a photographer from Arbroath, where they married by Warrant of the Sheriff Substitute. Sadly, they separated before 1921 and eventually got a divorce. Myra went to London, where she worked as a housemaid in Portman Square. She may later have trained as a nurse. Returning to Scotland at the start of the War, she took up a residential position as PA to a wealthy family of solicitors. Later, she became the live-in Housekeeper and Nurse to Wilfred Semple, one of the sons of the family. He left her his house, furniture and car when he died in 1970.

Myra herself died in Paisley in 1981.

William Kenneth Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1898. He was said to given the wrong age at call-up and enlisted as a Private in the Gordon Highlanders. He was killed, probably at the Battle of the Selle in Flanders, almost the last action of the War, in 1918.

NOTES

Place names
See 1783 map by Stobie.
When John Stewart married Margaret MacGlashan in 1811, the Parish Clerk wrote down his abode as Glaicnacaisardoch. The Gaelic may translate as hollow-steep-dwelling. It hints at a house in a steep-sided valley. There are plenty of such places in the area north of the River Garry to Glen Fender and lower Glen Tilt. Since the Stewarts were associated with this area - Craggan and Ballentoul - it is likely that Glaicnacaisardoch was here also.

Craggan (rocky place), John's birthplace, was a group of at least two cottages - Wester and Easter - belonging to the Lude estate, at Craggan Corner, the point where Wade's military road heads away from the old A9 at Kingisland towards Old Blair.
Old Parochial Registers
The following may help to account for the paucity of records for our Stewart family.
Baptisms
As there were strong social and religious pressures to baptise infants, it is thought that most children, even illegitimate ones, were baptised. Not all baptisms were recorded in the registers, however. This was either because parents might have had to pay for the entry, or because of inefficiencies in the record-keeping system.
Marriages
As marriage registration was not compulsory, the registers were not comprehensive. In Blair Atholl they were not kept very well. There are no marriage entries at all from 14th December 1781 to 26th August 1784.
Deaths
There are no death or burial registers for Blair Atholl.
The Minutes and the Accounts of the Kirk Sessions recorded mortcloth payments and donations received, occasionally with the names of the deceased attached. One such payment is likely to refer to Charles Stewart - see below.
Charles Stewart records
Charles's name appears in his son John’s death register entry of 1855. He was a mason, married to Janet Campbell. He was at Craggan at the time of his son’s birth. This is the only definitive record of his existence.
Our Stewart family is presumed to have followed the naming conventions of the day, at least for the male line. So, John and Margaret’s firstborn son, Charles (born in 1813), was named after his paternal grandfather, Charles. According to the convention, John’s own paternal grandfather would have been born around 1745 and christened John.
There are only three instances in the Blair Atholl records of the mid-1750s of sons named Charles born to a John Stewart. They are listed here and may or may not be ancestors of our Stewart family: :
1) One was born on 11 October 1757 to John Stewart and Elspeth Robertson in Pitagowan, N of the River Garry, across from Struan (4 miles W of Blair Atholl). John was from Bohally (E of Tummel Bridge) while Elspeth was from Dalinriach (W of Tummel Bridge). After their marriage on 10 June 1755, the couple appear to have moved north to Pitagowan, where Charles was born. This Charles Stewart probably married Katharine Gow at Pitagowan on 30 May 1786. Four children were recorded in the OPR: Janet (b 1789), Grissel (b 1792), John (b 24 June 1794) and Margaret (b 1797).
2) Another Charles Stewart was born on 5 March 1758 to John Stewart and Ann Stewart at Easter Invervack, the homestead near Struan that was also known as Balnastewardoch. Charles probably married Janet Ferguson there on 27 Dec 1783. Three children were recorded in the OPR: Janet (b 1788), George (b 1790) and Alexander (b 1807).
3) A third Charles Stewart birth took place on 18 April 1768 to John and Sarah Stewart at Nether Bohespick (NW of Tummel Bridge). It is not known if, or to whom, he got married.
Other Charles Stewart records worth mentioning are:
4) A marriage of a Charles Stewart (no known birth information) to Margaret McDonald at Kindrochit (S of the River Garry near Struan) on 9 April 1776.
2 children were recorded in the OPR: Margaret (b 1784) and John (b 1 February 1789 at Calvine, N of the River Garry near Pitagowan).
5) Entries in the Kirk Session Accounts for 1764 and 1765 show that 10s charity was paid for Charles Stewart a boy in Invertilt (later to be known as Bridge of Tilt).
6) An entry in the Accounts Ledger for 26th June 1774 shows that £1 charity was given to Charles Stewart in Croftcrombie, a homestead near Croftmore in Glen Tilt (around 2.5 miles from Bridge of Tilt).
7) An entry on the Collections page (No 122) of the Heritor's Minutes and Accounts book for 1827 reads: 25 February - To the mortcloth from the friends of Charles Stewart late at Bridge of Tilt - 4s [Scotland's People reference: CH2/430/8]. This probably refers to the new bridge over the Tilt, built in 1822. Charles's abode was half a mile or so from Craggan, where John Stewart was born.
Based on this, Charles is thought likely to be our John Stewart's father. The parish possessed two mortcloths - fine and coarse. The amount paid in this instance - 4s - was probably for the fine mortcloth, indicating that Charles Stewart was relatively affluent.
A Janet Stewart, perhaps his widow, received charity from the Kirk between 15 Oct 1826 and 7 Dec 1828.
John Stewart records
1)   A John Stewart was baptised on 13 April 1755. His father was Neil Stewart of Balinloin (near Shierglas), who married Isobel Robertson of Carrick (near Fincastle) on 11 Dec 1752. John’s own son Niel (sic) was baptised at Tomban of Pitaldonich (near Struan) on 1 June 1789. Neil married Christian McKinzie on 17 Feb 1828 and a son, John, was born in 1832. Neil was a mason. He was recorded at Craggan in the 1841 census; the next entry on the page was that of our own John Stewart. However, no relationship between John and Neil Stewart has been established.
2)  In the Kirk Session Minutes for 23 January 1763, a John Stewart in Ballintoul (between Craggan and Bridge of Tilt) paid a fine of £5 2s for fornication with Katharine McDonald. No pregnancy or child was mentioned. Had either of the pair been married, the term "adultery" would likely have been used. It is possible that John and Katharine were Charles Stewart's parents, just before they got married - he is thought to have been born in 1763 or 1764, though there is no record in the OPR.
3) On 1 September 1765 John Stewart in Ballintoul, probably the same man, a wright by trade, repaired the east loft seats and communion table. Later that month, he was paid 6s Scots for taking down a tent and laying it up in the Church. On 18th May 1766 he was paid 14s for mending the east church loft and setting up a tent.
4)  On 8 May 1782, John Stewart, a mason in Bridgend of Tilt, was given a contract to build a ‘strong stone bridge over the Garry near the Kirktown of Strowan, for £83:10/- sterling’ [1].
5)  John Stewart, mason in Bridge of Tilt, presumably the same man, was contracted on 8 Jun 1789 to repair the bridge over the Water of Errochty at Kirktoun of Strowan and to 'uphold his work' for ten years thereafter [1].
6)  In 1792, a John Stewart of Bridge of Tilt and an Alexander Stewart built a bothy in Glen Tilt. They earned 1s 8d per day [1].
7) The John Stewarts in 4), 5) and 6) above seem likely to have belonged to the same family. Perhaps the following man was also a member of this family: on 11 November 1810, a John Stewart, mason in Bridge of Tilt, married Elizabeth Stewart of Middlebridge (in Glen Fender). They may have had a son, James, on 30 March 1820.
John, Elizabeth and James were a different family to our Stewarts, who were associated with nearby Craggan and Ballintoul.
On 26 Oct 1828 a mortcloth was rented for this John Stewart, late of Bridge of Tilt. And a month earlier Elizabeth Stewart of Bridge of Tilt had received 1s 6d charity from the Kirk.
It is possible that this John Stewart came from the Struan area - one was born in Pitagowan in 1794. Interestingly, he had a Charles Stewart father.
8)  In the 1817 Census of the Stewarts of Atholl, compiled by Stewart of Garth, a John Stewart, mason, was listed at Dunkeld with 4 children. He was descended from the Stewarts of Fincastle (a glen north of the River Tummel), which may have been part of the Shierglas estate in Dull Parish.
This could have been our John Stewart – he had 2 sons and 2 daughters, born in 1813, 1815 and (twins) in 1816 – were it not for the fact that the twins were born and died on the same day in 1816, so would probably not have appeared in the 1817 Census data. While it is true that our John Stewart was in Dunkeld at the time (his first 4 children were born there), he probably came from the Blair Atholl area, rather than Fincastle. Information about the Atholl Stewarts was so sparse as to be almost non-existent in the 1817 Census, so might explain his non appearance.
9)  On 17 March 1824 a John Stewart, mason, and an Alastair Stevenson quoted for the construction of the new church at Blair Atholl. Their price was £1255 with £35 for materials from the old church taken into account. A John Angus from Dunkeld won the contract. John Stewart's abode was not given [1].
10)  There is an intriguing entry in the Heritors' minutes and accounts for 16 April 1820 stating that John Stewart of Craggan paid a fine of 18s 6d sterling for fornication with Margaret Stewart of Haugh. The latter was either Haugh of Blair or Haugh of Urrard, both low-lying areas near the River Garry. By this time, the word "adultery" was seldom used by the Session, so the fornicator could have been our John Stewart who was married to Margaret McGlashan. That said, the misdeamour appears to have been dealt with fairly leniently (at the time, it was common for fornicators in Blair Atholl to be fined £1 or more). It is possible that if this really were our married John Stewart, he would have been referred to the Presbytery of Dunkeld to explain himself, as used to happen with adulterers.

References
[1]   "Church and Social History of Atholl", by John Kerr, Perth & Kinross Libraries, 1998
[2]   The locations of many homesteads and townships are given in "A Gazetteer of Place Names in Blair Atholl Parish" at http://www.borenich.co.uk/Place_names.html
[3]   This writer is indebted to the transcriptions of the Blair Atholl Kirk Session Minutes provided by the webmaster of the Borenich website.
The Minutes themselves appear on the Scotland's People website. Unfortunately, there is a gap from 1780 to 1843. The Accounts, however, are uninterrupted. The Collections side shows donations, collection box returns, mortcloth dues, marriage services, fines for sexual misdemeanours and rents. Curiously, there are no payments for baptism entries in the Register. The Distributions side shows charitable payments to the poor, loans, payments for services and materials and for salaries.
For political and social interest, this writer's transcription of an entry for 15th May 1741, is shown here:
"Resolutions, viz
1 That lists of all the begging poor be laid before the meeting of Monday next,
2 That the said list be then purged, the non Indigent cast out, and badges given to the really Indigent, therewith to travell the parish, and some method devised not only to restrain the non-indigent from begging, but to furnish them Some How, [with some means of support?]
3 That the poor of other parishes be furtherwith ordered, and sent home to their own parishes, and a proper person em-ployed at the expense of the parish, to clear the parish of such vagabonds.
4 That the Session exert themselves to raise what funds they can with the utmost speed and diligence and with such funds as they with the assistance of the Heritors can raise, supply such of the poor who are unable to travel, and also buy lint to be spun by such poor as can spin and they to be payd in meall for their work or spinning."