Celebrating Montgomery’s Favorite Son

MONTGOMERY, TX -- 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.