William G. Stewart (Louisiana)

The razing of William G. Stewart Elementary School in Minden, Louisiana, after sixty-two years of use, with the front entrance still standing (August 17, 2011)

William Green Stewart (October 25, 1854 – October 31, 1925)^[1] was a farmer from a prominent family in his native Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, USA. As a former president of the Webster Parish School Board, he was the namesake of William G. Stewart Elementary School, which operated on Middle Landing Street in the parish seat of Minden from 1949 until its demolition in 2011.^[2]

Family background

Stewart was the third of four children of Douglad (correct spelling) Stewart, Jr. (1826–1884), a native of Sampson County, North Carolina who was reared in Georgia, and the former Mary Elizabeth Culbertson (1830–1860), a native of Coosa County, Alabama. Douglad Stewart farmed in Alabama before relocating in 1849 to Webster Parish. After the death of Mary Elizabeth, Douglad Stewart wed his sister-in-law, Sarah Frances Culbertson (1840–1885), William Stewart's aunt and stepmother. From this second union, came seven children, the half-siblings of William Stewart.^[3] Stewart's middle name is the same as his maternal grandfather's first name, Green Culbertson (1801–1886), a South Carolina native who after farming in Georgia and Alabama came in 1851 to Claiborne Parish, from which Webster Parish was formed in 1871. He began purchasing land for the Stewart-Culbertson farm. He was the postmaster at the defunct community of Flat Lick near the Pine Grove Community north of Minden. By the time of the 1880 census, Green Culbertson was living in Milam County in east central Texas, where he died six years later at the unincorporated community of Davilla at age of eighty-five.^[4] Green Culbertson is interred at Davilla Cemetery.^[5]One of Green Culbertson's great-grandsons and a great-nephew by marriage of William G. Stewart was Floyd D. Culbertson, Jr., a lawyer who practiced in three states who was the mayor of Minden from 1940 to 1942.^[6][7]

Biographical sketch

William G. Stewart was born in the Pine Grove Community^[8] of then Claiborne Parish and educated at the former Minden Male Academy, the forerunner of Minden High School.^[2] He then attended for one year Homer College in Homer in Claiborne Parish. He spent ten months in Texas, where he was briefly a schoolteacher.^[1] He soon returned to Minden, where he was from 1879 to 1888 a deputy sheriff and ex-officio tax collector under three sheriffs, G. W. Warren, J. W. Reagan, and Daniel Webster Pratt. From 1900 to 1904, Stewart he was a Ward 4 Minden member of the Webster Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body akin to the county commission in other states.^[9]

In 1888, Stewart moved to his 320-acre farm north of Minden with his wife, the former Ida Nora Killen,^[1] one of eight children of John Sidney Killen, a prominent farmer and cattleman, and his wife, the former Sarah Monzingo (1828–1913). Killen had fought with the Minden Rangers in the American Civil War^[10] and was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Claiborne Parish in 1871, when Webster Parish was created. His term of service is not available in the state records.^[11] Nora Killen graduated from the former Minden Female College, another forerunner of Minden High School. The Stewarts married in 1881 and had nine children, two of whom died in infancy or childhood: Ida Nora Stewart Pope (1882–1959), Rosa Claire Stewart (1883–1884), Albert Sidney Stewart (1885–1956), Ruth Seal Stewart Davis (1889–1983), Parry Dougald Stewart (1891–1929), Chester Graham Stewart (1892–1967), James Russell Stewart (1894–1956), William Killen Stewart (1897–1901), and Thomas David Stewart (1899–1973).^[12] William Stewart was a member of the Methodist Church; his wife like most Killens and Culbertsons, a Southern Baptist. Stewart was also affiliated with the Knights of Pythias.^[1]

Stewart gravestone at Minden Cemetery

Two of Stewart's half-brothers were lawyers. E. L. Stewart of Minden was from 1904 to 1908 a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives.^[11] Daniel Webster Stewart, Sr. (1857–1935), was at the time of his death the oldest living member of the Webster Parish Bar Association.^[13] Stewart is interred along with other family members at the historic Minden Cemetery.^[1] After sixty-two years of use, Stewart Elementary was razed in August 2011. It was financed by a bond issue after World War II, along with a companion institution on the eastern side of Minden, the still-functioning E.S. Richardson Elementary School, named for Edwin Richardson, a former parish school superintendent and the president from 1935 to 1941 of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, who died in 1950.

References