Ruth McEnery Stuart (1849–1917) was an American author.
She was born Mary Routh McEnery Stuart, in Marksville, Louisiana.[1][2] (She changed the spelling of her name to “Ruth” after she began her career in literature.) Stuart’s true date of birth is not known with certainty. When she was three, Stuart moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. Stuart taught school there until she married Arkansas farmer Alfred Oden Stuart on 6 August 1879. Alfred Oden Stuart was a widower with eleven children; he died in 1883 and she returned to New Orleans. Ruth and Alfred Oden Stuart had one son, but he died in 1904 or 1905.
Stuart was born to a wealthy and politically powerful family; one biographer writes that “it has been said that the Rouths and the McEnerys owned more slaves than any other two families in the United States.”