Flandrau, Charles E. Charles E. Flandrau and the Defense of New Ulm. Ed. Russell W. Fridley, Leota M. Kellett and June D. Holmquist. New Ulm: The Brown County Historical Society,1962. pp. 11-12:
Charles E. Flandrau Arrives in Minnesota:
In the early 1850s western New York, bordering the eastern end of the Great Lakes, served as a jumping-off point for the West. Flandrau was in daily contact with young men heeding Horace Greely's advice, and he observed the steady exodus of youths heading west in search of fame and fortune. The excitement generated by the tales of life and opportunity on the frontier kindled in the restless Flandrau a longing to share in this westward migration and a desire, which he never lost, for adventure in unknown places.
As a newly established territory, Minnesota was a chief target of this emigration, and it was to Minnesota that the twenty-five-year-old Flandrau went in the fall of 1853, Accompanied by Horace R. Bigelow, a fellow New Yorker who was also a lawyer, he reached St. Paul in November. Both men soon gained admission to the bar of Minnesota Territory, and they immediately opened a law office on Third Street in St. Paul under the firm name of Bigelow and Flandrau.
Charles Eugene Flandrau was born in New York City on July 15, 1828. His ancestry was French Huguenot on his father's side and Irish on his mother's. His father, Thomas Hunt Flandrau, was a lawyer and for several years the partner of Aaron Burr, former vice-president of the United States. His mother, Elizabeth Macomb, was a half sister of Alexander Macomb, commanding general of the United States Army from 1828 to 1841.
Little is known of his boyhood. He received what formal schooling he had in Georgetown District of Columbia, but his training virtually ended at the age of thirteen when he became a sailor. After three years at sea and another two years as a mahogany mill employee, he went to Whiteboro, New York, where in 1847 he began to study law in his father's office. He was admitted to the bar of Oneida County on January 7, 1851. Having found an absorbing vocation, Flandrau entered into partnership with his father, an arrangement that lasted until the fall of 1853.
"Minnesota Territory in 1853 looked promising to Charles Flandrau. By that time the frontier had passed by Fort Snelling on the outskirts of St. Paul and had moved westward to the newly constructed post of Fort Ridgely, a hundred and twenty-five miles or so up the Minnesota River. The foundations of government were being laid. The Whig administration of Alexander Ramsey, the first governor of the territory, had given way to that of Willis A. Gorman of the Democratic party -- the lifelong political affiliation of Flandrau." Charles E. Flandrau and the Defense of New Ulm, pp. 11-12
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