Flowers Final 28:02:25 - Flipbook - Page 13
Edward Fordham Flower was born in Hertfordshire in 1805. His father Richard Flower had married into the
Fordham brewing family and it was from his father that the young Edward Fordham learnt the art of beer
making. In 1807 Richard purchased the Marden Hill estate in Hertfordshire.
Edward Fordham Flower 1805-1883
Edward Fordham was the youngest of a family of five and he loved animals. However, he once mistreated a
pony with a whip and his angry father used it on him. It was a lesson he never forgot.
The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and new mechanised agricultural machinery had started to appear
on the estate. With his eldest son George, Richard introduced Merino sheep on the estate but they weren't very
successful and did not breed particularly well. During the Napoleonic blockade agriculture had become greatly
depressed throughout the land and food had become the priority rather than fleece.
Richard held firmly radical beliefs which were inherited by his son Edward Fordham. His brother Benjamin
founded the Journal "The Cambridge Intelligencer" who himself had spent time in prison for libelling a bishop!
Benjamin's daughters, Sarah and Eliza were the first ladies of culture. They possessed advanced ideas for their
day. Sarah wrote the well-known hymn "Nearer my God to Thee", and Eliza wrote the music. The two girls
loved poetry and took an enthusiastic interest in the young poet Robert Browning. Their attention inspired
many of his earliest works.
Marden Hill became a centre for radical politics and those who gathered there included the political agitator
William Cobbett. They discussed the abolition of slavery, the corruption of tax gatherers, the hardships of
farmers, advances in agriculture, the attractions of republicanism, and even emigration.
Emigration to America
Although it was still wartime, in 1814 Edward Fordham's elder brother George visited France to learn about
their agricultural practices. During his visit he met the Marquis de Lafayette who told him of opportunities of a
new life in America. The seed had been sown in his mind and in 1816 George went to America to find a place
to settle. Armed with a letter of introduction from Lafayette, George introduced himself to past president
Thomas Jefferson who had been elected in 1801. Now retired, he continued to advise in the capacity of an
elder statesman. Jefferson warmly welcomed George and invited him to stay at his house. There in the library
George discovered a recently published copy of his "Agricultural travels in France". The two men got on
famously and Jefferson persuaded George to emigrate to America. Back at home Richard Flower sold the
estate in preparation to join George. In 1817 a party of 88 men, women and children, stores, cattle and sheep,
set sail for America. At this time Edward Fordham was 12 years old.
On reaching Philadelphia, the Flower party hired three wagons, each drawn by a team of six horses, and set out
across the Allegheny Mountains for the Ohio River. Young Edward Fordham led one of the teams, with his
mother sitting by his side. They floated 9000 lbs of baggage and an upright piano down river from Cincinnati by
flatboat. After 1000 miles of travelling they reached their destination, in Boultinghouse Prairie. There was
nothing to the west of them except occasional Indians, trappers and squatters. Here they joined Morris
Birkbeck and his family and together they founded the town of Albion which included a library, a church and
an inn which sold beer as cheaply as in London.
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