Benjamin Franklin Flanders was born on January 26, 1816, in Bristol, New Hampshire. He grew up and attended school in New Hampshire and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1842. He moved to New Orleans the following year. He briefly studied law before beginning work as a schoolteacher and newspaper editor. He married Susan Sawyer around 1847, and they had at least six children: Catherine, born around 1848; Susan, born around 1852; Mary, born around 1856; Joseph, born around 1859; Benjamin, born around 1861; and Rufus, born around 1865.

 

In 1850, he owned $1,000 of real estate. He became secretary and treasurer of the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railroad in 1852, and by 1860, he owned $20,000 of real estate and $6,000 of personal property. He remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, and according to an early biographer, he “was compelled to leave New Orleans for the north because of his devotion to the Union.”

 

He returned to New Orleans in April 1862 after Union forces captured the city. He became city treasurer in July 1862, and Unionist voters elected him to Congress as a Republican in December 1862. During the summer of 1863, he briefly served as captain of Company C of the 5^th Louisiana Infantry. In August 1863, he became a special agent of the United States Treasury Department. He held the position until 1866, and he served as governor of Louisiana from June 1867 until January 1868. He served as mayor of New Orleans from 1870 until 1872, and then as Assistant Treasurer of the United States. He retired from politics in the 1880s, and he died in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, on March 13, 1896.

 

Image: Benjamin Franklin Flanders (courtesy Wikicommons)

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