Romanian personalities from the Republic of Moldova. Who was Alexander Stuart?

Baron Alexandru Stuart - what a role the descendant of a Scottish family, born in Bessarabia, played for the science and culture of the country.

We continue to explore our city and get to know the biographies of people who contributed to the development of history, culture and of science in our country! ... 👉 On November 9, 1842 (according to other sources - on November 26), in the village of Geamăna, Bender county, Bessarabia, Baron Alexandru Stuart was born, a promoter of culture, militant of public life, scientist, biologist, founder of the Sevastopol Biological Station , of the first Children's Hospital in Chisinau and the Psychiatric Hospital in Chisinau.

But his most valuable achievement, the one that has remained until now as a particularly important element in the country's culture, was the initiative to found a museum in Bessarabia (in 1889), which today bears the name of the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History. Namely, with the direct participation of Baron Stuart, who held the position of President of the Bessarabia Gubernatorial Zemstva Council, between 1903-1905 a special edifice was built for the Zemstva Museum, according to the project of the architect Vladimir Țiganko.

In the new building, the museum was opened on April 30, 1906. The baron himself donated some of his paleontological collections to the newly formed museum (he participated in the excavations himself). A photograph from the baron's palaeontological expedition to the town of Taraclia is still kept in the museum...

He was a man who loved his country and people very much, no matter what social class they belonged to. He never showed servility and conformity, he never pursued personal goals, he worked intensely until an advanced age, often risking his health, throughout his entire activity being permeated by the supreme ideals of culture and humanity. He died on October 20, 1917 and, in the revolutionary maelstrom in which the country and the city were engulfed, few people paid attention to his departure for eternity. He was buried in the cemetery of the church of St. Emperors Constantine and Elena, so that later, in the 70s, during the construction of the road, his grave disappeared without a trace...