FLOWERS, ELISHA (?-?). Elisha Flowers, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred settlers, was the son of Edward and Rebekkah Flowers of Kentucky. He probably arrived in Texas by 1822. He married Polly Smalley, also of Kentucky, and by around 1823 they had a son. They eventually had at least two children. Flowers received title to a sitio of land in what is now Matagorda County and a labor of land now part of Colorado County on July 19, 1824. On December 26, 1826, he wrote Stephen F. Austin from Bay Prairie that he had had a labor of land in front of his half league surveyed and was plowing it. In the winter of 1826-27, when the Flowers and nearby Charles Cavanah families were living on Liveoak Bayou, Polly Flowers and Cavanah's wife and three daughters were killed by Karankawa Indians. Flowers and his son Romulus returned to Kentucky, where Elisha married Mrs. Susannah Baker, with whom he had at least one more child. Romulus Flowers eventually returned to Matagorda County, where he married Elizabeth DeMoss, daughter of Susan (or Susanna) and Peter DeMoss.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924-28). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Matagorda County Historical Commission, Historic Matagorda County (3 vols., 1986-88).
