Served in Colonel Wesson's Massachusetts line regiment in 1778, 1779 and 1780, and in Capt. Oliver Shattuck's Company, Lieut. Col. Barnabas Sear's Regiment. He built the house he and Hannah lived in at Leyden about 1793. The house was still standing about 1905. He lived in the immediate neighborhood of a religious sect known as Dorrillites and seemed to have been a follower. In the summer of 1795 he went to Truxton, New York (then Fabins), his family joining him the following winter, the journey being made with an ox team and taking six weeks. He became a prosperous man in his new home, prominent and active in building up the new town, giving the new community transportation, through a line of teams to Albany, and having built for himself a spacious house, then popularly known as the "big red house," he entertained emigrants free of charge. He erected a sawmill and a gristmill, and gave the land for the cemetery, and was at one time the second wealthiest man in Onondaga County (the county has since divided) but reverses came; a big lawsuit was waged year after year for water privileges until both parties spent most of their property.
Between 1819 and 1827, he visited his relatives in Middlebury, Vermont, taking the journey on horseback, sitting erect and stately in the saddle, his long white hair done up in a queue making a deep impression upon the memory of one of the younger members of his son's household. In 1834, he again sought a home elsewhere; this time Michigan was the goal and a third house was built at Genesee, Genesee County, where he resided until his death in 1837. (Severance, B. Frank. Genealogy and biography of the descendants of Walter Stewart of Scotland and of John Stewart who came to America in 1718 and settled in Londonderry, N.H. Greenfield, Mass. : T. Morey & Son, 1905, pg. 100-102).