Flowers Final 28:02:25 - Flipbook - Page 118
heir way with adventure and
energy; andthis
having
made ato
fortune,
spent their in
energies
and fortune in the
ratford-upon-Avon,
delivered
speech
an audience
Brisbane.
of an ideal.
pened like this. Richard Flower was a yeoman farmer in Hertfordshire, and after the end of the
eonic war, he declared that England had gone to the dogs, and that he was off to the New World. So in
ogether with his wife and seven of his eight children, all their belongings and even the stock from his farm,
off for America to join his eldest son, George who had emigrated a dozen years previously. Together they
ked West and eventually reached the shores of Lake Michigan, where he was offered some land, at one
an acre. He refused it, because it was marshy and unsuitable for agriculture. That is the land on which
o now stands. They went on and settled in West Illinois, and founded the town of Albion, where they
on the land.
d Fordham Flower, named Fordham after his mother's family, who were then and still are, a brewing
in Hertfordshire. He was a blonde giant, 6'6" tall and broad in proportion and quite amazingly handsome.
s also of forcible character, and when still only a stripling of 17, he got into trouble. Those were turbulent
n America, for although it was still some 30 years before the Civil War, feelings were running high about
estion of slavery, which, in Illinois, was the accepted state of affairs. Edward Fordham Flower felt so
nately against slavery and expressed himself so forcibly about it, that his life became difficult and even
ous. His father, learning that there was a price on Edward's head, persuaded him to leave the country for
till it had all blown over.
