Jeb Stuart

His father, Archibald Stuart, was a War of 1812 veteran, slaveholder, attorney, and Democratic politician who represented Patrick County in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, and also served one term in the United States House of Representatives.

His mother Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart ran the family farm, and was known as a strict religious woman with a good sense for business.

He was of Scottish descent (including some Scots-Irish).

His great-grandfather, Major Alexander Stuart, commanded a regiment at the Battle of Guilford Court House during the Revolutionary War.

His father Archibald was a cousin of attorney Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart.

Stuart was educated at home by his mother and tutors until the age of twelve, when he left Laurel Hill to be educated by various teachers in Wytheville, Virginia, and at the home of his aunt Anne (Archibald's sister) and her husband Judge James Ewell Brown (Stuart's namesake) at Danville.

James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart (February 6, 1833 – May 12, 1864) was a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War.

He was known to his friends as "Jeb,” from the initials of his given names. Stuart was a cavalry commander known for his mastery of reconnaissance and the use of cavalry in support of offensive operations. While he cultivated a cavalier image (red-lined gray cape, the yellow waist sash of a regular cavalry officer, hat cocked to the side with an ostrich plume, red flower in his lapel, often sporting cologne), his serious work made him the trusted eyes and ears of Robert E. Lee's army and inspired Southern morale.

He entered Emory and Henry College when he was fifteen, and attended from 1848 to 1850.

During the summer of 1848, Stuart attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army, but was rejected as underaged.

He obtained an appointment in 1850 to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from Representative Thomas Hamlet Averett, the man who had defeated his father in the 1848 election.

Stuart was a popular student and was happy at the Academy.

Although he was not handsome in his teen years, his classmates called him by the nickname "Beauty", which they described as his "personal comeliness in inverse ratio to the term employed."

He quickly grew a beard after graduation and a fellow officer remarked that he was "the only man he ever saw that [a] beard improved."

Robert E. Lee was appointed superintendent of the academy in 1852, and Stuart became a friend of the family, seeing them socially on frequent occasions.

Lee's nephew, Fitzhugh Lee, also arrived at the academy in 1852.

In Stuart's final year, in addition to achieving the cadet rank of second captain of the corps, he was one of eight cadets designated as honorary "cavalry officers" for his skills in horsemanship.

Stuart graduated from West Point in 1854 and served in Texas and Kansas with the U.S. Army.

Stuart was a veteran of the frontier conflicts with Native Americans and the violence of Bleeding Kansas, and he participated in the capture of John Brown at Harpers Ferry.

He resigned his commission when his home state of Virginia seceded, to serve in the Confederate Army, first under Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, but then in increasingly important cavalry commands of the Army of Northern Virginia, playing a role in all of that army's campaigns until his death.

He established a reputation as an audacious cavalry commander and on two occasions (during the Peninsula Campaign and the Maryland Campaign) circumnavigated the Union Army of the Potomac, bringing fame to himself and embarrassment to the North.

At the Battle of Chancellorsville, he distinguished himself as a temporary commander of the wounded Stonewall Jackson's infantry corps.

Stuart's most famous campaign, the Gettysburg Campaign, was flawed when his long separation from Lee's army left Lee unaware of Union troop movements so that Lee was surprised and almost trapped at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Stuart received criticism from the Southern press as well as the proponents of the Lost Cause movement after the war.

Stuart graduated 13th in his class of 46 in 1854.

He ranked tenth in his class in cavalry tactics.

After an arduous journey, he reached Fort Davis on January 29, 1855, and was a leader for three months on scouting missions over the San Antonio to El Paso Road.

He was soon transferred to the newly formed 1st Cavalry Regiment (1855) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, where he became regimental quartermaster and commissary officer under the command of Col. Edwin V. Sumner.

He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1855.

Also in 1855, Stuart met Flora Cooke, the daughter of the 2nd U.S. Dragoon Regiment's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke.

Burke Davis described Flora as "an accomplished horsewoman, and though not pretty, an effective charmer," to whom "Stuart succumbed with hardly a struggle."

They became engaged in September, less than two months after meeting.

Stuart humorously wrote of his rapid courtship in Latin, "Veni, Vidi, Victus sum" (I came, I saw, I was conquered).

Although a gala wedding had been planned for Fort Riley, Kansas, the death of Stuart's father on September 20 caused a change of plans and the marriage on November 14 was small and limited to family witnesses.

Their first child, a girl, was born in 1856 but died the same day.

During the 1864 Overland Campaign, Union Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry launched an offensive to defeat Stuart, who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern.

Stuart was born at Laurel Hill Farm, a plantation in Patrick County, Virginia, near the border with North Carolina.

He was the eighth of eleven children and the youngest of the five sons to survive past early age.

Although he enjoyed the civil engineering curriculum at the academy and did well in mathematics, his poor drawing skills hampered his engineering studies, and he finished 29th in that discipline.

Stuart was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant and assigned to the U.S. Regiment of Mounted Riflemen in Texas.