September 22, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/22/2011
STUART, Flora Cooke (1836-1923) was the wife of Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart and the daughter of Union general Philip St. George Cooke. She met Stuart, a dashing subordinate of her father, while living in the Kansas Territory in the 1850s, and after marrying, the two settled in Virginia. Secession, however, split their family, with Cooke, a respected cavalryman, remaining in the United States Army and Stuart eventually becoming chief of cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. "He will regret it but once & that will be continually," Stuart said of his father-in-law's decision; he even renamed his and Flora's months'-old son, Philip St. George Cooke Stuart, after himself, James Ewell Brown Stuart Jr. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Flora Stuart spent as much time as possible in camp with her husband, and chafed at the generous attention he received from admiring women in Virginia and across the South. When Stuart died after being wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern (1864), she donned mourning garb and wore it for the remaining fifty-nine years of her life. During that time, she served as headmistress of a women's school in Staunton that was subsequently named for her. Unusual "Certificate of Proficiency" for a student Alice Hume of the Virginia Female Institute, signed by "Mrs. J.E. B. Stuart" as Principal, June 11, 1889. Printed in gold, 1pp. oblong folio. Fine condition. Very attractive.
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