Introduction to the Stewart-Bam Papers
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PRONI holds two small but choice groups of Stewart-Bam/Stewart of Ards Papers ('Stewart-Bam' is an early 20th century double-barrelling, which took place following the marriage of the heiress to Ards in 1910) from two different provenances and bearing the different reference numbers D4137 and D2789/19.
D4137 comprises c.375 documents, almost entirely correspondence, 1771-1849 (with some later items), deriving from the Stewart family of Ards, Dunfanaghy, Co. Donegal. The first of these Stewarts was Alexander (1746-1831), younger son and namesake of the Alexander Stewart who acquired the Newtownards and Comber estates, Co. Down, in 1744, and younger brother of Robert Stewart of Mount Stewart (1739-1821), later 1st Lord, Earl of and Marquess of Londonderry.
The papers document the estates and political activities of both branches of the family in Cos Londonderry and Donegal, as well as the estates and political activities of the senior, Marquess of Londonderry, branch in Co. Down, and, to a much lesser extent, in Co. Durham. They are complementary to PRONI's other small cache of Stewart of Ards papers (D2784/19), which is almost entirely an estate archive, 1781-1937.