"Flora and Jeb"

Flora Cooke, daughter of Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke of the 2nd U.S. Dragoons, met Lt. J.E.B. Stuart at Fort Leavenworth in the summer of 1855, and after a September engagement and a November wedding they settled into the life of a soldier's family on the frontier. Raised in an army family, Flora embraced the duties of wife, mother, and homemaker as their family grew with a daughter and a son. With the coming of the war, Stuart and his family moved east, and Flora endured long separations, repeated moves, the death of her first daughter, constant fear for her husband, and finally the death of Jeb himself. Determined to keep her family together and support herself and her children, she taught in Saltville, Virginia, and at the Virginia Female Institution in Staunton, Virginia, where from 1880 to 1899 she helped shape the lives of many young women and was honored when the school was renamed Stuart Hall. After her second daughter died in childbirth in 1899, Flora resigned her position to raise her grandchildren, a duty she carried through successfully. She died on May 10, 1923, at the age of eighty-eight, and was buried beside her husband in Hollywood Cemetery.

Virginia · United States