Stuart Map
Stuart is a town in Patrick County, Virginia, United States, and its county seat. The population was 961 at the 2000 census. Due to recent boundary expansion, the town of Stuart has an estimated population of nearly 1,700 residents. The town of Stuart was named after Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, of nearby Ararat, Virginia.
The Town of Stuart was first incorporated as Taylorsville, Virginia, in 1792, in honor of early settler George Taylor. Stuart has been the county seat of Patrick County since the county's formation from Henry County, Virginia in 1791. With the courthouse at its center, the Stuart Uptown Historic District encompasses the historic core of the county seat and includes government, financial, religious, and commercial buildings dating from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.
By 1850, Taylorsville had grown to include approximately 50 dwellings and businesses. The 1850 census reported 18 households with 50 adults (including 29 boarders) and 60 children living in the area of the courthouse. Occupations listed included four farmers, two innkeepers, three merchants, attorneys, two physicians, two cabinetmakers, two saddlers, one harness maker, three tailors, one bricklayer, nine laborers, a clerk, a mail carrier, and a sheriff with two deputies. The Danville and Wytheville Turnpike, following present-day Virginia State Route 8, was established in the 1850s. In 1848, the Richmond and Danville Railroad was chartered, and tracks were completed to Danville by 1856.
Nearby cities include Danbury, Bassett, Fieldale, Floyd, Stanleytown.