Flournoy, George M.
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George M. Flournoy, state official and Confederate officer, was born in Louisville, Georgia, on November 30, 1832, the son of Marcus A. and Margaret (Shelman) Flournoy. He attended the University of Georgia and graduated from law school at Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1853. He and his bride, Eugenia (Haralson), moved to Austin, Texas, the following year, and Flournoy opened a law practice there. After Eugenia died, Flournoy married Louisa Virginia Holman on July 1, 1858. He was attorney general for the state of Texas in 1860 and a delegate to the 1860 Democratic nominating convention in Galveston. At a mass meeting in Austin on September 22, 1860, he asked the audience, "What will you do if Lincoln is elected? That, I know, is what you want to hear about. I say, secede from the Union." With Oran M. Roberts, Guy M. Bryan, W. S. Oldham, and John Marshall, Flournoy helped call a Secession Convention at Austin on December 3. He sat as a delegate to the convention from January 28 through February 4, 1861, and served as a coauthor of the declaration of causes for secession. He resigned the following year to organize the Sixteenth Texas Infantry regiment of Walker's Texas Division. He served as the colonel of the regiment throughout the war. After the fall of the Confederate government he fled to Mexico, where he served for a while with Maximilian's forces. After his return to Texas, Flournoy practiced law at Galveston for a few years. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1875 and moved to California by 1878 and practiced law. He died in San Francisco on September 18, 1889. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in San Francisco. All of the graves in that cemetery were later moved to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, San Mateo County, California.
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Evening News (San Jose, California), September 20, 1889. Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, September 18, 1889. Dudley Goodall Wooten, ed., A Comprehensive History of Texas (2 vols., Dallas: Scarff, 1898; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1986). Marcus J. Wright, comp., and Harold B. Simpson, ed., Texas in the War, 1861–1865 (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Junior College Press, 1965).
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Thomas W. Cutrer, “Flournoy, George M.,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed February 21, 2025, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/flournoy-george-m.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
FFL19
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Original Publication Date:
- 1952 Most Recent Revision Date:
- February 12, 2015
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