Flandrau, Charles Macomb, 1871-1938

Flandrau was an American author.

Charles Eugene Flandrau was born July 15, 1828, in New York City, the son of Thomas Hunt and Elizabeth Maria (Macomb) Flandrau. He was educated in Georgetown, District of Columbia, served as a seaman on several United States revenue cutters, and returned to New York as a veneer-sawyer in a mahogany mill. He returned to Whitesboro, New York, and studied law under his father, being admitted to the bar in 1851. He formed a partnership with his father but in November 1853, migrated to Minnesota Territory in company with Horace R. Bigelow, with whom he formed a law partnership.

Later he settled in Traverse des Sioux in the Minnesota River valley, where he held numerous local offices, was a member of the Minnesota Territorial Council and served in the Constitutional Convention of 1857. In 1856, President Franklin Pierce appointed Flandrau agent to the Dakota Indians. In 1857 President James Buchanan appointed Flandrau as Associate Justice to the Territorial Supreme Court. He continued service on the state Supreme Court until resigning in 1864.

At the beginning of the U.S.-Dakota War in August 1862, Flandrau organized militia units in southwestern Minnesota and was authorized by Governor Alexander Ramsey to have general charge of the southwestern frontier, especially in the defense of New Ulm.

In 1864 he moved to Nevada but shortly returned to Minneapolis and practiced law; in 1870 he moved to St. Paul where he continued his legal practice. Flandrau was a member of the Democratic Party.

Flandrau married Isabella R. Dinsmore of Kentucky on August 10, 1859. She died June 30, 1867, leaving two daughters, Martha Macomb Flandrau (later Mrs. Tilden Russell Selmes) and Sarah Gibson Flandrau (later Mrs. F. W. McCutcheon). On February 28, 1871, Flandrau married Rebecca B. Riddle, daughter of Judge William McClure of Pittsburgh. They had two sons, Charles Macomb Flandrau and William Blair McClure Flandrau.

Flandrau died at his home in St. Paul on September 9, 1903.