George Walton Flower

In 1860 he was a manufacturer of butter tubs and cheese boxes in Theresa, Jefferson County, NY. He organized a company of men there, enrolled on 15 May 1861, and mustered as Captain of Company C, 35th New York Infantry on 11 June.

He was wounded by a piece of shell in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

He went home to recover then resigned for disability from wounds on 5 November 1862 in Washington, DC and returned to his business.

He had then served nearly two years, had begun as a captain, and was yet a captain. He had seen other men, his inferiors in ability, in moral worth, in previous business conditions, and, in social standing, rise above him in rank, and as his own regiment had acceptable men in office, promotion there was unlikely. His ambition was unsatisfied, for he had every quality for making a good soldier and courageous commander. He resigned his captaincy and left the regiment, bearing with him the sincere respect and affectionate regard of all his comrades.

Active in Republican politics before the war, he was elected the first Mayor of Watertown, NY and served three terms, 1869-71. By 1875 and to at least 1880 he was in construction, of large buildings and railroads.

On 5 May 1881 the Watertown Daily Times reported

The entire community was this morning pained and shocked by announcement of the death of George W. Flower, which event took place at the Union Square hotel in New York, about ten o’clock last night ... He was last Saturday taken sick with a hard cold which finally developed into pneumonia, that dreaded disease being the cause of his death.

His service from the Adjutant General.1 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1880, the NY State Census of 1875, the City of Watertown, and a bio sketch in R.A. Oakes' Genealogical and Family History of the County of Jefferson, New York (1900), source of the quote above, from a "biographer and personal friend" not named. His obit quote found in a piece on Memory Ln about his Watertown home. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph in the Scott D. Hann Collection, also published in Military Images (September/October 2002).

08/05/1830; Theresa, NY

05/04/1881; Manhattan, NY; burial in Brookside Cemetery, Watertown, NY