PERIOD OF SLAVERY, 1823-1866
Charles W. Stewart was a native of Alabama, and, at the age of ten in 1833, was transported with the Choctaws, to whom as a slave he belonged, to the southeastern part of Indian Territory. John Homer was then his master, and he located about three miles northeast of the present town of Grant, His first marriage occurred, while he was serving Homer. The wedding of one of Homer's daughters occurred a few years later, and his wife was assigned to serve in the home of the newly married daughter. She located in a distant part of the reservation, and he was thus deprived of his first wife, Charlotte Homer.
Charles Stewart, a white man, keeping store at Doaksville, soon afterwards became his owner, and his previous name, "Homer" was then changed to "Stewart", after the name of his new master. About the year 1860, Samson Folsom, a Choctaw who lived eight miles southeast of old Goodland, became his new and last owner.
PERIOD OF FREEDOM, 1866-1896
He began to hold religious meetings as early as 1856, when he belonged to Stewart, and lived at Doaksville. Mrs. Stewart, who had been a missionary teacher, encouraged him to learn to read and furnished him with books for that purpose. Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, pastor of the Choctaw church, gave him the instruction in the Bible, that fitted him for the work of the ministry, and accorded to him the privilege of holding meetings in the church, for his people, on occasional Sabbath afternoons.
He was accorded ordination by the Presbytery of Indian (southern) in the fall of 1870, and was then officially assigned the pastoral care of the congregations he had previously developed at Doaksville and its vicinity, and at Wheelock, or Oak Hill. He greatly appreciated the recognitions accorded to him by the Presbytery, which had previously given him a license to preach; and he endeavored to magnify his office, as an evangelist, by going to the "regions beyond," as fast as the door of opportunity opened for him. During the early sixties he gathered new congregations for worship at his home on the Folsom farm and in the Horse Prairie neighborhood. The Oak Hill appointment was established soon after he was accorded his freedom.
During the year 1883, the evangelistic work among the Freedmen in Indian Territory, was voluntarily transferred by the Southern to the Northern Presbyterian church, with the conviction the latter was better prepared to successfully prosecute it. At the time of this transfer Charles W. Stewart was enrolled as an ordained minister and designated as the Stated Supply of the following organized churches: Beaver Dam, Hebron, New Hope, Oak Hill and St. Paul. During the next two years three more of his appointments, Mt. Gilead, Forest and Horse Prairie were enrolled, as the fruit of his labors, and added to his circuit. At this early date he had also a preaching station at Caddo near Durant, and the distance across his circuit of appointments, from Caddo eastward to St. Paul at Eagletown, was 118 miles.
In 1886 when the Synod of Indian Territory was formed by the union of three Presbyteries having 24 ministers, his circuit included 8 of the 43 churches that were then enrolled. He continued to serve all of these churches four more years.
Previous to this latter date, 1890, he was the first and only Presbyterian minister that preached the gospel to the colored people of Indian Territory. During that period, he laid the foundation for most of the churches, that are now enrolled in the Presbytery of Kiamichi and give employment to a half dozen ministers. He was now advanced in years and beginning to feel the infirmities of age. He relinquished, in favor of two new men from a distance, all of his circuit of churches, except Oak Hill and Forest, which he continued to serve three more years, or until 1893. He was then at the age of 70 honorably retired by the Presbytery, after a long and remarkably successful career in the gospel ministry.