Robert Stuart was an explorer in the fur trade in the 19th Century who led an expedition from Oregon to St. Louis, discovering the South Pass through the Rocky Mountains along the way.

He was born and grew up in Scotland and in 1807 moved to Montreal, to join his uncle David Stuart, who worked in the fur trade for the Canadian North West Company. In 1810, famed trader and entrepreneur John Jacob Astor had hired them to work for his Pacific Fur Company.

Stuart was part of the crew of an Astor company ship, the Tonquin, which sailed first to the Falkland Islands and then around Cape Horn and up the western coast of North America, reaching what is now Astoria, Ore., in May 1811. There, they set up Fort Astoria.

After a time, ship and crew sailed farther north, to Vancouver Island. An interaction with Native Americans there resulted in a large number of deaths and the destruction of the ship. It was left to Stuart and a small group of men to return eastward overland.

The party left Astoria on June 29, 1812, bound for St. Louis. With Stuart were Ramsay Crooks, John Day, Benjamin Jones, François LeClerc, Robert McClellan, and André Vallé.

The group headed east, through what is now Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming, traveling on what would later become the Oregon Trail. Highlights of their journey included paddling down the Snake River, crossing Teton Pass and seeing Jackson Hole, and discovering the South Pass, which would accommodate so many settlers heading west along the Oregon Trail in later years.

Stuart and his group reached St. Louis near the end of April in 1813. Stuart continued on to New York, to report to Astor. He also presented to Astor and to President James Madison the journal that he had kept of his journey, including a detailed map of his travels. Astor's Pacific Fur Company went bust because of the War of 1812 (with British forces capturing Fort Astoria), but Stuart saw his journal published in France.

Despite this publication and the general knowledge of Stuart's expedition, two later explorers, Jedediah Smith and Thomas Fitzpatrick, claimed to have discovered South Pass in 1824.

Stuart, meanwhile, had married Emma Elizabeth, and the couple eventually had nine children together. Stuart continued to work for Astor, in his new venture, the American Fur Company. Astor named Stuart manager of the company's northern branch in the 1810s, and he and his family lived in Michigan for the next few decades. Stuart at one point served as Treasurer of the State of Michigan. He died on Oct. 28, 1848.