Here we go Loop dee Loop, how genealogy can be more like a Spider's Web.

So, here I am, researching the relationship of William R Stewart and  his abandoned and tragically deceased wife,  Sarah Hortense Davis Stewart, who died shortly after their divorce in 1895; their anonymous daughter born in 1892; his mistress Wincy Catherine "Kitty" Davis, second cousin to his wife, who was only 15 or 16 at the time of his affair, and ended up in the State Hospital for the insane at age 25 and spent the next 18 years of her life there and is buried on the grounds.

Who was this cad who left a trail of broken women in his wake?

So far, this is what I have discovered about William R Stewart.

He was born in Monroe, Union County, North Carolina on December 7, 1866 to John Maschiel Stewart and Harriett McLaughlin Stewart. Obviously, he is of Scottish decent. His father was a Clothing Merchant and involved somewhat in town affairs, holding a few offices during the 1870's and 1880's. Hortense Davis's father was also a merchant, and a former sheriff of Stanly County, NC. Her father died in 1882 and her mother remarried a John. T. Crump. Both the Crumps and the Davis's were large land owners along the Rocky River in the 1800's. William and Hortense were married on June 21, 1891 in Albemarle, Stanly County. Sometime about a year later a daughter was born. That June wedding soured and William R Stewart was found to be having an affair with a teenaged second cousin of Hortense, Kitty Davis. Hortense filed for divorce based on abandonment. William R Stewart was found to being teaching at a music school in Chester, South Carolina in 1895. Hortense died in 1896. Kitty Davis went on to marry an unknown Cox. She was admitted to Broughton at the age of 25 and died there at the age of 43.

William R Stewart was the grandson of a Martha Caroline Lemmonds Stewart, meaning he was a descendant of both Revolutionary patriots Mathew Stewart and John Lemmonds of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. My paternal grandmother Bertha Lemmonds Lambert is also a descendant of John Lemmonds. Martha Carolina was the sister of her great-grandfather. William R Stewart, then is in my family tree, not once but twice.

I am still waiting on documents from Raleigh and help from Chester, that might aid me in this mystery.

How things can go around in circle....