Thomas Thorn Flagler (October 12, 1811 – September 6, 1897) was a U.S. Representative from New York.
The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they compose the legislature of the United States.
Born in Pleasant Valley, New York, Flagler attended the local schools. He learned the printer's trade and became one of the owners and publishers of the Chenango Republican in Oxford, New York. In 1836 Flagler moved to Lockport, New York, where he published the Niagara Courier until 1842 when he entered the hardware business.
Oxford is a town in Chenango County, New York, United States. The town contains a village also named Oxford. Oxford is an interior town in the south-central part of the county, southwest of the city of Norwich. At the 2010 census the town population was 3,901. The name derives from that of the native town of an early landowner from New England
A Whig, Flagler served as member of the New York State Assembly in 1842 and 1843, and Treasurer of Niagara County between 1849 and 1852.
The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. Four presidents belonged to the party while in office. It emerged in the 1830s as the leading opponent of Jacksonian democracy, pulling together former members of the National Republican and the Anti-Masonic Party. It had some links to the upscale traditions of the long-defunct Federalist Party. Along with the rival Democratic Party, it was central to the Second Party System from the early 1840s to the mid-1860s. It originally formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. It became a formal party within his second term, and slowly receded influence after 1854. In particular terms, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization, banking and economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing. It appealed to entrepreneurs, planters, reformers and the emerging urban middle class, but had little appeal to farmers or unskilled workers. It included many active Protestants and voiced a moralistic opposition to the Jacksonian Indian removal. Party founders chose the "Whig" name to echo the American Whigs of the 18th century who fought for independence. The political philosophy of the American Whig Party was not related to the British Whig party. Historian Frank Towers has specified a deep ideological divide:
The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature, the New York State Senate being the upper house. There are 150 seats in the Assembly, with each of the 150 Assembly districts having an average population of 128,652. Assembly members serve two-year terms without term limits.
Niagara County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 216,469. The county seat is Lockport. The county name is from the Iroquois word Onguiaahra; meaning the strait or thunder of waters.
Flagler was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-third Congress and reelected as an Opposition Party candidate to the Thirty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1853 – March 3, 1857).
The Thirty-third United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1853, to March 4, 1855, during the first two years of the administration of U.S. President Franklin Pierce. During this session, the Kansas–Nebraska Act was passed, an act that soon led to the creation of the Republican Party. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the Seventh Census of the United States in 1850. Both chambers had a Democratic majority.
The Opposition Party was a party identification under which Northern, anti-slavery politicians, formerly members of the Democratic and Whig parties, briefly ran in the 1850s. This was in response to the expansion of slavery into the new territories. It was one of the movements which arose from the political chaos in the decade before the Civil War in the wake of the Compromise of 1850. The movement arose before and was quickly subsumed by the coalescence of the Republican Party in 1856.
The Thirty-fourth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C., from March 4, 1855, to March 4, 1857, during the last two years of Franklin Pierce's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the Seventh Census of the United States in 1850. The Whig Party, one of the two major parties of the era, had largely collapsed, although many former Whigs ran as Republicans or as members of the "Opposition Party." The Senate had a Democratic majority, and the House was controlled by a coalition of Representatives led by Nathaniel P. Banks, a member of the American Party.
He was not a candidate for renomination in 1856 and resumed former business pursuits. In 1859, together with inventor Birdsill Holly (1820–1893), he founded the Holly Manufacturing Company, makers of Holly's patented fire hydrants. Flagler was also active in other businesses, including Lockport's gaslight company, the Niagara County Bank, and the Lockport and Erie Railroad.
Birdsill Holly Jr. was a mechanical engineer and inventor of water hydraulics devices. He is noted for his inventions related to city water system equipment and apparatus for fire protection, like the fire hydrant.
By now a Republican, he was again a member of the Assembly in 1860, and he was a Delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1867 and 1868.
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
He died in Lockport, New York, on September 6, 1897, and was interred in Glenwood Cemetery.
