Lemuel Flower Stagecoach Pioneer

Biography of Lemuel Flower Lemuel Flower, a legendary division agent, for Ben Holladay’s Overland Mail company epitomized the spirit of the pioneer west. Enduring hardships of severe weather, long hours on the road, and surviving injuries incurred from Indian attacks. Lemuel worked thirty-five years in the transportation of freight, mail, and passengers spanning the entire continent of the United States from coast to coast. William F. Cody, places Lemuel Flower in Wyoming, working as an Assistant Division Agent at Three Crossings, with Jack Slade near the end of the Pony Express days, stating, “About the middle of September of 1861 the Indians became very troublesome on the line of the stage road along the Sweetwater. Between Split Rock and Three Crossings they robbed a stage, killed the driver and two passengers, and badly wounded Lieut. Flowers, the assistant division agent,” Promoted to a Division Agent in 1862 by Ben Holladay, Lemuel arrived in western Wyoming the 16th of April 1862, to replace William A. Reid, as manager of the stations from Pacific Springs to Miller’s Crossing near Fort Bridger in western Wyoming. A group of nine men in two stage coaches were attacked by Indians on the 17th of April 1862. During the four hour attack six of the nine men were wounded, namely: Lemuel Flower, James Brown, William Reid, Philip Rogers, Arthur Stephenson, and James Anderson. Lemuel Flower was gravely wounded, with a gunshot wound that passed through the hip lodging in his back, and one in the groin, lodging near the kidneys. The nine men waited almost three weeks at the Three Crossings station, tending to their own wounds, before being transported by military escort to Fort Bridger, where they received medical attention. The unlucky Lemuel Flower, the Division Agent, scarcely well recovered from the effects of his wounds at Split Rock, before he found himself, three months later, on his first trip eastward, right in the midst of new Indian fights. A few hours outside of the Pacific Springs Station, in the Wyoming Territory, Mr. Flower encountered an Indian fight while escorting two passengers from California and a lady from Carson.” The Overland Stage Company relocated its northern Wyoming stage stations one-hundred miles south to a safer trail called the old Cherokee Trail, July 11, 1862. The new route included Jack Slade’s division which extended from Denver to the crossing of the North Platte, where Flower’s division began and continued to Millersville (Green River), the beginning of Bromley’s division to Salt Lake City. Lemuel Flower was subsequently assigned to replace Jack Slade, as division agent of the Denver to North Platte section on November 18, 1862. Lemuel worked next as the Seneca Station Agent, with offices housed in the “Smith Hotel,” as known as the “Seneca Hotel” in Seneca, Nemaha County, Kansas, located eighty miles due west of St. Joseph, Missouri in 1865. Mr. Flower filed an affidavit, dated November 15, 1865, in Congressional Hearings, testifying to the Indian attacks, and damage inflicted on the stage stations, and loss of stock and forage located at the Wyoming stations in his division of Ben Holladay’s Overland Stage Company. Heeding the beckoning call of the West, Lemuel moved west sometime before May of 1868, to Golden City, Jefferson County, Colorado Territory. Lemuel managed the Overland House, and was a Wells Fargo stage agent, located at 1117 Washington Avenue in the Loveland Block. Lemuel transferred to the Guy House, located at the mid-point of the wagon road to Central City in 1870. Lemuel next managed the Michigan House, located three miles up the canyon from Guy Gulch, a stage stop for the Colorado Stage Company, located before the turnoff to Smith Road, which traversed southward to Black Hawk and Central City. Lemuel died on the 20th of October 1871, while managing the Michigan House. The funeral procession was one of the largest known funeral processions in Jefferson County, Territory of Colorado. Andrew Oliphant Patterson, Esquire, member of the 3rd and 4th Colorado Territory Legislature, wrote an eulogy about Lemuel Flower, published in the Colorado Transcript, Golden, Colorado. The eulogy cited Lemuel’s employment with the transportation companies of “Good Intent,” “Stockton and Stokes,” and “Neil, Moore and Company,” all transportation companies on the east coast. Later research revealed Lemuel worked his way across the North American continent, while in the employment of the “Butterfield Overland Mail Company,” “Pony Express,” “Ben Holladay Overland Stage Company,” “Wells Fargo,”, and “Colorado Stage Company.” . Lemuel Flower Biography-Stagecoach Pioneer by Barbara Lewellen © 2012 1 The Early Years 1836-1860 Lemuel’s eulogy states he worked for the eastern transportation companies of Good Intent, Stockton & Stokes, and Neil, Moore and Company, yet these facts could not be verified. Events in Hudson, New York and near Marietta, Ohio, close to the National Road, mention a Lemuel Flower, which could not be verified as being namely, Lemuel Flower, of Massachusetts. Being of a transient nature, Lemuel’s name does not appear in census data until the year 1860. 1858 – 1861 - Overland Mail Company-John Butterfield –Southern Route to California ANTHONY HOUSE – LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS Lemuel Flower, who previously worked the “Good Intent” line managed by Colonel James E. Reeside, (as stated in his eulogy) is found residing in the Anthony House, located on Markham Street in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1860. The Anthony House served as stage offices for Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company, and its sub-contractors. Joseph T. Reeside, a son of Colonel James Reeside is also present at the Anthony House, listed as a representative of the “Arkansas Stage Company.” 1860 – Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas Federal Census August 3, 18601 1 1860 Federal Census, Little Rock, Pulaski, Arkansas Federal Census, page 72, 446/447, Anthony House Hotel: “L. Flowers, 45, Driver, America, (line 5), and J. T. Reeside, 25, Arkansas Stage Co., Tennessee, b. ca. 1835 (line 17) Lemuel Flower Biography-Stagecoach Pioneer by Barbara Lewellen © 2012 2 1858 – 1861 - Overland Mail Company-John Butterfield –Southern Route to California ANTHONY HOUSE – LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS Joseph T. Reeside, and John E. Reeside, sons of Colonel James E. Reeside, co-owners of the “Arkansas Stage Company” along with business partners Peter Hanger, William Rapley, Richard Gaines, and James B. Price. The Arkansas Stage line ran from Helena, via Wittsburgh, along up to Gainsville, and from Little Rock to Fort Smith, Arkansas. In addition, John E. Reeside was a co-owner of the “Chidester and Reeside Company,” sub-contractors for Butterfield, servicing the line between Memphis and Little Rock and Fort Smith in 1858. John E. Reeside, prior to arriving in Arkansas, was awarded a 4-year contract in 1854 for the monthly service in the state of Utah commencing from Independence, Missouri by way of Westport, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, Independence Rock, and Fort Bridger. The same crew travelled the full 1,200 miles with one light mule wagon for passengers and another for the mails bags. “Indian depredations along the Wyoming route led to the withdrawal of Reeside and, later, McGraw’s release from the contract in August of 1856.” One can only speculate that Lemuel worked the Utah line that traversed through the state of Wyoming for John E. Reeside. 2 3 The Overland Mail Company also known as the Butterfield Mail Company, founded by John Butterfield, president of the American Express Company, with associates William G. Fargo, William B. Dinsmore, James V. P. Gardner, Marcus L. Kinyon, Alexander Holland, and Hamilton Spencer, won a six-year contract with the U. S. Government, on September 16, 1857, valued at $600,000, to carry the monthly mail from southern locales on the Mississippi River to California. Two eastern terminals on the Mississippi River, St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee would converge at Little Rock, Arkansas. Thence to Fort Smith, Arkansas, traversing the Oklahoma Indian Territory, southward to El Paso, Texas, Tucson, Arizona, Fort Yuma, near the border of Mexico, then headed north to Los Angeles and San Francisco. John Butterfield was ousted as president of the Overland Mail Company in March of 1860 and replaced by members from the board of directors of Wells Fargo. Skirmishes with the Confederates on the Butterfield Overland Trail, also known as the “Ox Bow Trail” at the onset of the Civil War in 1861 resulted in the U. S. Postmaster shutting down service to the southern Overland Route to California. Focus on travel services shifted back to the Central Overland Route from Kansas to California with the U. S. Government awarding new contracts on the Central Overland California Route, starting in St. Joseph, Missouri, and terminating in Placerville, California. U. S. Postal 100-year 1858-1958 Commemorative Stamp4 Image of an Overland Mail Coach under attack. Background consisting of a southern United States map with the Butterfield Overland Mail Route marked 2 United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, From, Historic U. S. Post Offices in Wyoming, “Establishment of Early Mail Service in Wyoming,” April 17, 1987, page 32 http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/64500740.pdf 3 Executive Documents , House of Representatives, 2nd Session, 33rd Congress, 1854-1855, Washington, A. O. P. Nicholson, Printer, 1855. 4 U. S. Postal “Overland Mail 1858-1958” stamp from the personal stamp collection of Barbara Lewellen Lemuel Flower Biography-Stagecoach Pioneer by Barbara Lewellen © 2012 3 RUSSELL, MAJORS, & WADDELL 5 6 Russell, Majors, & Waddell, established itself as the largest firm of overland freighters in the early history of the development of the west. Established in 1848 by William H. Russell and Alexander Majors, the firm “Russell & Majors Company” started out freighting on the Santa Fe Trail, with twenty wagons and two hundred oxen completing a trip once a year to the south, from Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 92 days.

Load more