FLORA COOKE STUART
[Thanks to Martha Boltz, Fairfax Chapter #1410 and Fourth District Chairman, and Nancy Gum, Turner Ashby Chapter #162 and Division President, for supplying the background information for this article.]
Flora Cooke Stuart was born in Missouri on January 3, 1836, the daughter of Virginian and career Army officer Philip St. George Cooke. Educated at a private boarding school in Detroit, Flora met the dashing James Ewell Brown Stuart while her father was commanding the 2nd U.S. Dragoons at Fort Leavenworth. Stuart had recently graduated from West Point and was stationed on the Kansas frontier. As befitted the daughter of a colonel of cavalry, Flora was a skilled horsewoman and soon began going on long evening rides with Stuart.
The young officer was as taken with Flora as she was with him, and it didn't take him long to propose. Following a brief engagement, the couple married in August 1855. The union would produce three children: Flora, who preceded her father in death at the age of 5; J.E.B Stuart, Jr., who was originally named for his paternal grandfather but was renamed after Cooke turned his back on his native Virginia and remained loyal to the Union; and Virginia Pelham, named in honor of John Pelham, Stuart's 24-year-old artillery commander who was killed in action at Kelly's Ford in March 1863.
After compiling a brilliant military record as cavalry chief of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, Stuart was shot and mortally wounded by one of General George Armstrong Custer's Michgan soldiers on May 11, 1864, during the Battle of Yellow Tavern. Stuart was carried to his brother-in-law's house in Richmond but died the next day, before Flora could reach his side. She would live almost threescore more years but would never abandon her widow's weeds. Stuart would not have approved; the dashing cavalier, well known for his plumed hat and red lined cape, had always chided her for wearing dark-colored clothing that did not adequately accent what he saw as her natural beauty.
Flora remained true to the wishes expressed by her husband on his deathbed that his children "be educated South of the Mason and Dixon Line, and always...retain the right of domicile in the Confederate States." She supported herself and her family as a teacher, eventually becoming headmistress of the Virginia Female Institute in Staunton, which was renamed "Stuart Hall" in her honor in 1907. She was elected an Honorary President of Virginia Division UDC in 1905 as well as an Honorary President of General. Upon her death on May 10, 1923 (almost 59 years to the day after her husband's), she was buried with great ceremony beside her general in Hollywood Cemetery.