Capt. John Steadman was the originator of the Steadman family in Nova Scotia. He was a descendant of Thomas Stedman who was one of the original immigrants to America and who founded the Connecticut branch of the family. After the French and Indian War, the British removed the French from Nova Scotia. Many of these Acadians went to Louisiana and became the nucleus of the Cajun people. However, the British desired to re-populate the region with good loyal Britishers. By the mid-1700s, New England was beginning to fill up so they went to New England and offered large tracts of land to anyone who would move to Nova Scotia.

Capt. John Steadman took them up on the offer and, as a Surveyor, was given an extra allotment for participating in the survey. He left family in Rhode Island from his first wife and took his new wife Frances Congdon to Nova Scotia in 1760 as part of this Planters group. He settled in Cornwallis in what is now Kings County. Over the next few generations, his family spread out to Annapolis County, New Brunswick, and back to the United States.

Robert Stedman was one of the original Stedman immigrants to America. He arrived in Cambridge in 1638. Evidence suggests that he came to America from Holland; however, he was known to be of British origin. Was he in Holland, like the Pilgrims, to avoid religious persecution? Was he English from one of the Kent families? Was he English, but from some other part of England? Was he originally part of the Scottish family? For now, we are assigning him to the Kent family from Biddenden, but this assignment is by no means sure.

This genealogy is based on my research and was recently significantly supplemented by an 1880 unpublished genealogy that I discovered in the manuscript collection of the New England Historical Genealogical Society (NEHGS) Library in Boston. That work was done by Dr. Charles Ellery Stedman and his brother Dr. Henry Rust Stedman who were descendants of Robert Stedman. I will be publishing genealogies using this work to supplement work that I have already done over the next few weeks. I welcome your comments and corrections. I will not be updating the online database until I have assimilated this material.