Watauga Democrat. [volume] (Boone, Watauga County, N.C.) 1888-current, 1923-05-17
MRS. FLORA STUART, WIDOW
OF CONFEDERATE CAVAL-
LIER, DIES AT HOME IN
VIRGINIA

Mrs. Flora Stuart, widow of the
renowned Confederate cavalryman,
General ]. E. B. Stuart, and daugh-
ter of Major General Phillips st.
George Cook, of the Union forces,
died here late today at the home
of her son-in-law, R. Page Waller.
She was 88 years old.
While out walking Sunday, Mrs.
Stuart fell, sustaining a blow on
the head. Complications developed
and death resulted.
Mrs. Stuart had looked back on
nearly three score years of widow
hood. The glory of her husband,
the plumed cavalier of the Confede-
racy, and marked today as the
greatest leader of cavalry America
has ever produced, has gained with
each passing year. She had been
his wife scarcely ten years when her
dashing soldier husband was killed
in battle.
Romance has been woven around
the courtship of the great Confede-
rate cavalryman. Mrs. Stuart was
one of the most romatic figures in
| Thomas Dixon's "The Man in Gray"
an historical novel of the civil war,
in which the glory of General Stuart
and the heroism of his beautiful
young wife are betrayed in striking
phases.
Major General Cooke, then a
| colonel, was in command of Fort
Riley when the territory of Kansas
was opened. Lieutenant ]. E. B.
Stuart was in the regiment of
Colonel E. V. Sumner, commanding
at Fort Leavenworth. One day news
was spread to Fort Leavenworth that
the prettiest girl in Kansas had come
to Fort Riley from Virginia. Flora
Cooke had dashed across the country
from Harper's Ferry to visit her
| father. Lieutenant Stuart contrived
| to be sent as messenger to {. c., 4 ,lel
Cooke, and there he met her. The
next day he returned to his post and
got brief leave of absence to visit
her for 8 days. He proposed, and
was accepted. He returned to
Leavenworth to march with his regi-
ment against John Brown and his
insurrectionists on the Kansas plains.
Soon afterwards he married Flora
| Cooke.
At the outbreak of the war,
| Lieutenant Stuart resigned his COM
missions in the United States army
and threw in his lot with Virginia.
Colonel Cooke, his daughter, then the
mother of two sons, and her husband
met in Washington, and the two
soldiers bade farewell, each with a
prayer on his lips that they would
never meet in battle.
The young mother returned to her
home in northern Virginia to wait
and pray that her father and husband
would not cross swords out where the
war was raging. Time after time
| e'o Clie SoIillCI oWcpC dCIOSS uolCIeIH
Virginia, she would follow on the
outskirts, and often she and her
husband would meet on the fringe
of battle.
In the last two months of the war,
when the struggling armies of the
Confederacy were fighting with their
backs to the wall, and Stuart came
to be one of the strong arms of the
waning cause, he led his men one day
in a dash around the kings of the
opposing forces. Suddenly a blue
uniformed cavalryman, whose horse
had been shot under him in the tenn
pestous fight, blazed away at General
Stuart with revolver. The bull
let tore cash wound in the gene
RAILS breast. He was taken to
Richmond. A message was sent to
his wife, but while she was fastening
to his side over interminable miles
that lay between, the plumed cavalier
passed away.
At the close of the war, the gal
liant Cavalryman's widow bravely
turned her face from the past to the
future. She established fashionable
schools for girls at Staunton, and
most of her pupils were daughters of
| Confederate soldiers of Virginia and
: other southern states. She had re-
} sided here with her son-in-law, R.
| Page Waller, for 80 years. Her only
: surviving son is Captain j. E. B.
Stuart, U. S. A., retired, New York
City.