Background
Edmund Flagg was born on November 24, 1815, in Wiscasset, Maine, the only son of Edmund Flagg and Harriet Payson. His ancestor, Thomas Flagg, came to America and was a resident of Watertown before 1641.
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Diplomat lawyer playwright writer
Edmund Flagg was born on November 24, 1815, in Wiscasset, Maine, the only son of Edmund Flagg and Harriet Payson. His ancestor, Thomas Flagg, came to America and was a resident of Watertown before 1641.
Flagg graduated with distinction from Bowdoin College in 1835.
In Louisville, Kentucky, Flagg worked as a tutor, and in 1836 began with the Daily Journal a connection which lasted till 1861.
During 1837 - 1838 he read law in St. Louis, and wrote articles for the Daily Commercial Bulletin. In 1838 he published in two small volumes The Far West, originally a series of sketches done for the Louisville Journal to describe a summer spent on the Illinois and Missouri prairies.
He returned to Louisville in 1839, and between the poems, romances, and plays which he had already begun disseminating, joined with George D. Prentice in publishing the Literary News Letter. After a few months, largely for the sake of his health, he went to Vicksburg to help Sergeant S. Prentiss with his law practise, but, as an occasional contributor to the Daily Whig, fell into quarrels with the editor of the Sentinel and was wounded in the consequent duel.
In 1842 Flagg settled in Marietta, Ohio, and through 1843 edited the Weekly Gazette. Then he returned to St. Louis, where he edited the Evening Gazette, served as court reporter, wrote a book on Mutual Insurance (1846), and many plays elucidating for the Mississippi Valley the legends of Mary Tudor (1844), Ruy Bias (1845), and Catherine Howard (1847). His novel Edmond Dantes, derived both as to plot-origin and style from The Count of Monte Cristo, and so advertised, was published in St. Louis in 1849 and in Philadelphia in 1884.
During 1849, as secretary to the American minister in Berlin, Flagg traveled extensively in Europe, and he had scarcely returned to St. Louis, where he set up as a lawyer, before he was appointed consul to Venice.
After about two years at that post he again went to Saint Louis, where he edited the Democratic Times, and wrote in somewhat lyrical prose his two-volume illustrated book, Venice, the City of the Sea, 1797 - 1849 (1853).
In 1854, Flagg went to Washington, and until 1870 - except for the period 1858 - 1860, when he was again primarily a journalist - worked in the civil service, much of the time as a statistician in the Department of State. There he wrote a number of official reports, most notably the Report of the Commercial Relations of the United States with all Foreign Nations (4 volumes, 1856 - 1857), and composed articles about the West and a variety of other subjects for whoever, apparently, came asking.
After 1871 Flagg lived on a farm called "Highland View, " near Falls Church, Virginia. There he wrote his romance De Molai (1888), dealing with the suppression of the Templar Knights by Philip the Fourth of France in the fourteenth century. Crowded with intrigue, hazardous escapes, and spectacular descriptions, it is dedicated to the De Molay Mounted Commandery of Washington.
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On February 18, 1862, Edmund Flagg married Kate Adeline Gallaher of West Virginia. The couple had several children.