Stewart, a free-born African American, was converted in about 1815 after a youth of drunkenness and poverty. He followed a call from God to preach to the Wyandot nation in Ohio. Stewart was granted a license to preach, and word spread about his success among the Wyandot people. His efforts prompted the Methodist Episcopal Church to form a missionary society to support his work. Stewart was in his late 30s when he died of tuberculosis, but he did live to see Methodism firmly planted among the Wyandots. This quotation is found in James B. Finley, Life among the Indians (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, 1857), p.252
“O, my friends, pray to God to give you a hungering and thirsting after righteousness! Seek for this great grace, and you shall find it in due season. If you persevere in the way of well-doing, you will find in your path clusters of sweet fruits, that will satisfy your hungering souls; and being faithful to your Lord’s commands, when you have made your way through much tribulation, and lie down on your dying bed, you will be filled with the glorious prospect of the reward that awaits you.”From a letter to the Wyandot Indians, 1817