William G. Stewart (Louisiana)

William Green Stewart (October 25, 1854 - October 31, 1925) 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.
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. 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. Green Culbertson is interred at Davilla Cemetery.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.
Biographical sketch
William G. Stewart was born in the Pine Grove Community of then Claiborne Parish and educated at the former Minden Male Academy, the forerunner of Minden High School.
In 1888, Stewart moved to his 320-acre farm north of Minden with his wife, the former Ida Nora Killen, 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. 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. Daniel Webster Stewart, Sr. (1857-1935), was at the time of his death the oldest living member of the Webster Parish Bar Association.
Stewart is interred along with other family members at the historic Minden Cemetery.<ref name=bio/> 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.

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