E. L. Stewart

Edmond Lee Stewart, known as E. L. Stewart (March 22, 1872 – January 11, 1956),^[1]was a lawyer from a prominent family in his native Minden in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, USA. From 1904 to 1908 he was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives^[2] during the administration of Governor Newton Blanchard.

Background

Stewart was the fifth of seven children of Douglad (correct spelling) Stewart, Jr. (1826-1884), a native of Sampson County in southern North Carolina who was reared in Georgia, and the former Sarah Frances Culbertson (1840-1885), a native of Coosa County in central Alabama. Douglad Stewart farmed in Alabama before relocating to Webster Parish. After the death of his first wife, Mary Elizabeth Culbertson (1830-1860), he wed her sister, E. L. Stewart's mother. E. L.'s half-siblings from the father's first marriage included William Green Stewart (1854-1925),^[3] the namesake of the former William G. Stewart Elementary School in Minden, and Daniel Webster Stewart, Sr. (1857-1935), the oldest living member of the Webster Parish Bar Association at the time of his death.^[4]

Legal career

On May 17, 1897, E. L. Stewart graduated from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. One of his classmates was the later U.S. Senator John H. Overton and the future state Attorney General Bolivar Edwards Kemp, Jr.^[5] After his single term in the state House, Stewart was succeeded in the position by Robert Roberts, Jr., a former short-term mayor of Minden and a later a state court judge and the maternal grandfather of later Governor Murphy J. "Mike" Foster, Jr.

In 1917, E. L. and Dan Stewart, Sr., and Alberta Glass (1834-1937), a former soldier of the Confederate States Army,^[6] were sued by the Town of Minden for non-payment of the expense for the mandatory construction of sidewalks abutting their properties, based on a 1902 state law, which the plaintiffs challenged unsuccessfully on double appeal to the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit in Shreveport and the Louisiana Supreme Court in New Orleans. They did not request the sidewalks and sought to shield themselves from the associated costs.^[7] The Minden City Council had undertaken a sidewalk program pushed by subsequent Mayor Connell Fort.^[8]

Stewart's wife was Jim Brown Stewart (1873-1963), the sister of F. Dell Brown (1887-1973) of Minden.^[9][10]In a 1955 will, Stewart left his estate, the amount not specified, to a trust fund under the supervision to the former Minden Bank and Trust Company (since Regions Bank) and a nephew, attorney Daniel Webster Stewart, Jr. (1897-1982), with the intent of providing later payments to his nieces and nephews, including great-nephew Dan Stewart, III (1931-1987), once Stewart, III, reached the age of sixty-five; however, he died at the age of fifty-five. The trust fund was not questioned until 1968. Dell Brown sought part of the inheritance through her late sister, but Dell Brown died while proceedings were under court review. The trust fund was ultimately upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court; the funds were to have been disbursed to the heirs at the time of the death of Dan Stewart, III, ten years earlier than anticipated by E. L. Stewart.^[11]Jim Brown Stewart's will gave to the Webster Parish Library in 1963 the property and money for a new library facility. The "Old Ferguson Home", as it was known, was added in 1980 to the National Register of Historic Places. The Ferguson Home remains a part of the since expanded library plant which opened in 1996.^[12]

E. L. and Jim Stewart are interred at the historic Minden Cemetery.^[1] Numerous other Stewart relatives are instead buried at Pine Grove Methodist Cemetery north of Minden.^[3]

References