Biographical
Flanders was born oldest of nine children in Barnet, a town in Caledonia County in northeastern Vermont, and spent much of his childhood in Rhode Island. In his autobiography, Senator from Vermont, Flanders described life on his family’s subsistence farms in Vermont and Rhode Island, before he left to work in the machine tool industry for most of his career. In his first years as a machinist and draftsman, he spent his vacations traveling by bicycle over country roads between Rhode Island and Vermont and New Hampshire. Later, he lived for a time in New York City where he edited a machine tool magazine, but after five years decided to move back to Vermont. In 1911, he married Helen Edith Hartness, daughter of inventor and industrialist James Hartness. They made their home in Springfield, Vermont, where Flanders became president of the Jones & Lamson Machine Company. Flanders and his wife had three children: Elizabeth (born 1912), Anna (also known as Nancy—born 1918), and James (born 1923).
Read more about this topic: Ralph Flanders
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“Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue—one given and received in entire disinterestedness—since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, not the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.”
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