Edwin was born on May 5, 1837 in New York City, New York, United States, son of John and Mary (Aikman) Stewart, and a younger brother of John Aikman Stewart. His father, a native of Lewis, in the Hebrides, had come to America from Stornoway, Scotland, when a boy.
Edwin attended Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachussets, and later entered Williams College, preparatory to the study of law. His college work was interrupted by the Civil War, however, and though he received the degree of A. B. from Williams with the class of 1862, he joined the navy September 9, 1861, as assistant paymaster.
Stewart served first in the Pembina in the Port Royal campaign and, after promotion to paymaster April 14, 1862, in the Richmond, West Gulf Squadron, in operations on the Mississippi and at the battle of Mobile Bay. After the war, he was in the Michigan on the Great Lakes, 1865-68; fleet paymaster in the Hartford, Asiatic Squadron, 1872-75; and then for several years chiefly at New York, where in 1880-83 he was an inspector of provisions and clothing.
Following duty in the Lancaster, European Squadron, he returned to New York as chief pay officer, and through his reports was largely instrumental in accomplishing the reform by which naval purchases, hitherto made by several bureaus, were centralized in a new bureau of supplies and accounts.
He was appointed paymaster general, with the rank of commodore, and head of the bureau on May 16, 1890, and, with reappointments in 1894 and 1898, held this important post throughout the period of the Spanish-American War and up to his retirement for age May 5, 1899.
He had been made pay director, then the highest rank of his corps, September 12, 1891, and on May 5, 1899, he was made rear admiral. Secretary of the Navy John D. Long commended highly the work of Stewart's bureau, declaring that it was "performed with the most gratifying efficiency and promptness".
In his own report Stewart remarked that his bureau had carried on the work of three army departments and that despite wartime expenditures amounting in 1898 to $11, 422, 640, the prices paid "were in most cases no higher, and in many cases lower, than before the commencement of hostilities. "
After his retirement Stewart lived in Washington, District of Columbia, until 1901, and later at South Orange, New Jersey, where he died in his ninety-sixth year, the oldest officer on the navy list.
Edwin Stewart was commander of the District of Columbia Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion, in 1900, and in 1913-17 was vice commander-in-chief of the Legion's national organization. Notable in his handling of wartime supply problems was the use of refrigerator ships with both the Cuban and Philippine forces, and his pre-war memorandum anticipating the needs of Dewey's squadron.
He was twice married: first, August 24, 1865, to Laura S. Tufts of Andover, Massachussets, who died February 3, 1875, during his absence on the Asiatic station; and second, May 17, 1877, to Susan Maria, daughter of Edward Estabrook of Platteville, Wisconsin. He had two sons by each marriage, three of whom survived him, one of them a naval officer.
