STEWART, Austin, author, born in Prince William county, Virginia, about 1793; died after 1860. He was born in slavery, and when a lad was taken to Bath, New York He afterward fled to Canandaigua, and in 1817 he engaged successfully in business in Rochester. In 1826 he delivered an oration at the celebration of the New York emancipation act, and in 1830 he was elected vice-president of the National convention of negroes at Philadelphia. The following year he removed to a small colony that had been established in Canada West, named the township Wilberforce, and was chosen its president. He used his own funds to carry on the affairs of the colony, but, finding that no more land would be sold to the colonists by the Canada company, returned to Rochester in 1837. He afterward opened a school in Canandaigua, and after two years became an agent for the "Anti-Slavery Standard." He published "Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman" (2d ed., Rochester, New York, 1859).