Steward was born to James Steward and Rebecca Gould in Gouldtown, New Jersey. The son of free Blacks reared in a family that stressed education, he received his formal education in the Gouldtown public schools.
Steward moved from South Carolina to pastor the AME church in Macon, Georgia March 17, 1868. After the church was burned in a mysterious fire, he helped build a new AME church. The cornerstone was laid January 16, 1870 in the presence of 2,000 black Maconites. After the war he graduated from the Episcopal Divinity SchoolofPhiladelphia, and later was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree from Wilberforce UniversityinWilberforce, Ohio, in 1881.
From the founding of the organization until his death in 1924, Steward remained active among the scholars, editors, and activists of this first major African American learned society, refuting racist scholarship, promoting black claims to individual, social, and political equality, and studying the history and sociology of African American life.[2] Between 1907 and his death on January 11, 1924, Steward was a professor of history, French, and logic at Wilberforce University.
Steward was married to Elizabeth Gadsden (d. 1893) with whom he had eight sons: Frank Rudolph (b. 1872; Stephen Hunter (b. 1874), Theophilus Bolden (b. 1879), Charles, James, Benjamin, Walter, and Gustavus (b. 1883). His second wife was Dr. Susan Smith McKinney, the third African-American physician in the United States. He was a cousin to African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) bishop Benjamin F. Lee.
Steward, T.G. (1888). The End of the World; or, Clearing the Way for the Fullness of the Gentiles. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Church Book Rooms. OCLC 4090482.
^Seraile, William. Bruce Grit: The Black Nationalist Writings of John Edward Bruce. University of Tennessee Press, 2003, pp. 110-111.
^Alfred A. Moss. The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth. Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School (1991). "Chapter 4: The Chaplaincy 1865-1917". A Brief History of the United States Army Chaplain Corps. Ft. Monmouth, NJ: Dept. of the Army. OCLC26647374. Archived from the original on 2008-10-10. Retrieved 2008-11-18.
United States
