Richard Flower

Richard Flower (1761-1829) was the younger brother of Benjamin Flower (1755-1829), was a successful farmer and brewer near Hertford. Like Benjamin, Richard was an outspoken political reformer. Between 1789 and 1792, he served as a member of the Committee of Protestant Dissenters for Hertfordshire, a group organized for the purpose of petitioning Parliament for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Besides several short political pieces and letters which appeared in the Cambridge Intelligencer, he also published Observations on Beer and Brewers, in which the Inequality, Injustice, and Impolicy, of the Malt and Beer Tax (1802); Abolition of Tithe Recommended, in an Address to the Agriculturists of Great Britain (1809); and, with James Bearblock, A Treatise upon Tithes Containing an Estimate of Every Titheable Article in Common Cultivation, with the Various Modes of Compounding for the Same (1809).  In 1810 he purchased a large estate called Marden Hill, not far from the village of Hertford, in the parish of Tewin, where, according to Tom Adams, ‘men of dissenting views, radical politics and reforming zeal’ met frequently to discuss the problems of slavery, high taxes, poor rates, and unfair agricultural restrictions. Eventually, Flower became so dismayed with English economics and politics that he sold his estate in Hertford for £23000 and emigrated to Illinois in 1818, where he joined his son George Flower (1786-1862), who, along with the latter’s cousins, Elias Pym Fordham and Maria Fordham, had arrived at Morris Birkbeck’s fledgling English settlement at Albion the previous year.  Flower brought with him Eliza Andrews (1792-1861), sister of HCR’s friend Mordecai Andrews III, and they were soon married, despite the fact that George Flower was still married to his first wife in England, an indiscretion HCR found intolerable, since he thought very highly of Eliza Andrews, who appears frequently in his diary in 1816-17. Richard Flower would later write of his emigration experience in Letters from Lexington and the Illinois, Containing a Brief Account of the English Settlement in the Latter Territory, and a Refutation of the Misrepresentation of Mr. Cobbett (1819), and in Letters from the Illinois, 1820, 1821.  Containing an account of the English settlement at Albion and its Vicinity, and a Refutation of Various Misrepresentations, those more particularly of Mr. Cobbett (1822), to which Benjamin Flower attached a lengthy preface and notes. Isaac Errett described Richard Flower as

an anti-trinitarian, and for many years an intimate associate of Dr. Priestley, but a broad-minded, warm-hearted, pious man—when he came to this country from England, [he] brought with him what was at that time a very large and costly library, largely historical, biographical and theological.  It was large in its scope, for its owner, though rather unorthodox in faith, had a general intercourse with the various orthodox denominations; his home was open to ministers of all persuasions, and his reading spread over the entire field of theological literature.  His library was as wide in its range as that of his own free spirit of inquiry.

Richard Flower built a large country home outside Albion, called Park House, a home long ‘remembered by old settlers and distant visitors for its social reunions and open-handed hospitalities’, George Flower wrote in his history of Albion. ‘Strangers and visitors to the Settlement received a hearty welcome, saw all that was to be seen, and received all the information they wished for, with necessary refreshment and repose.  It may be truly said that, for thirty years, old Park House was never without its visitors, from every country in Europe, and every State in the Union.  They were welcome, unless the family was absent, if their stay was for a week, a month, or a year’.  Shortly after his arrival in Albion, Richard Flower began preaching regularly to a large group of settlers, forming a loosely knit Unitarian congregation.  According to his son, there was ‘no creed, no catechism, no membership; it was a free church, even if it could be allowed to be a church at all, by more strictly-organized bodies’. Richard and George Flower would become prominent political leaders in the English settlement at Albion and in the newly formed state of Illinois.  In 1823, they joined with the governor, Edward Coles, in leading the effort to keep slavery out of Illinois. In 1824, Richard Flower was commissioned by George Rapp (founder of the German Lutheran community at Harmonie, Indiana, in 1813) to return to England to find a buyer for the colony.  During his visit, Flower persuaded Robert Owen, a wealthy manufacturer, phil­anthropist, and reformer from New Lanark, Scotland, to purchase the property in Indiana, which Owen renamed New Harmony, eventually becoming one of the most famous social experiments in early American history. George Flower would later write of his father:

He was a striking and decided character, of marked features and imposing mien; hasty in temper, decided in speech, and prompt in action.  He never sought to conceal his thoughts, but gave utterance to what he conceived to be the truthful convictions of his mind in the strongest language.  Such a man could never be (what, it is true, he never sought to be) a popular man in America.  Englishmen, used to free speech at home, here uttering their unpremeditated thoughts, are apt to give offence.  Americans, more guarded and non-committal, escape that difficulty.  Once convinced of the truth of his impressions, no earthly power could turn my father from his course…. He sustained every institution, and subscribed liberally to every public work that was likely to benefit the Settlement.

For more on Richard Flower and his family, both in England and Illinois, see Dissenter’s Collection, MS. 3.C.16-18, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Tom Adams, ‘A Brief History of Marden Hill’, in Marden Hill Hospitality: A Collection of Recipes from the Residents of an Historic English Manor, Marden Hill. (Albion, IL: Albion’s  175th  Inc., 1993) (quotation above from p. 1); Isaac Erret, Life and Writings of George Edward Flower (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Co., 1885) (quotation above from p. 14); George Flower, The English Settlement in Edwards County, founded in 1817 and 1818, by Morris Birkbeck and George Flower (Chicago:  Fergus Print Co, 1882) (quotations above from  106, 135, 240-1); the Flower Family Collection, 1812-1974, Chicago Historical Society; Janet R. Walker and Richard W. Burkhardt, Eliza Julia Flower, Letters of an English Gentlewoman: Life on the Illinois-Indiana Frontier 1817-1861 (Muncie, IN: Ball State University Press, 1991); Mary Ann Salter, ‘George Flower Comes to the Illinois Country: A New Look at Motivations’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 69 (1976),  213-23; idem, ‘Quarrelling in the English Settlement: The Flowers in Court’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 75 (1982),  101-14.