Kentucky: A History of the State, Battle, Perrin, & Kniffin, 2nd ed., 1885,
Butler Co.

"AUNT FRANKIE" FLOWERS, Butler County.  In nearly every community one 
occasionally meets a person whose checkered life, filled with such varied 
experiences, renders the person an object of interest.  Such an one is 
the remarkable lady who is the subject of this sketch.  She was born near 
Berry's Lick, April 2, 1807, and received a fair English education.  She 
is the eldest of a family of eight children, whose parents were John and 
Nancy (Read) Furguson.  While she was still quite young her father died, 
and her mother soon after became blind, leaving the care of the large 
family to fall upon this young girl.  She very early became self-reliant, 
and was soon the sole support of her widowed mother and family.  All 
kinds of work devolved upon her, and she became as expert in chopping, 
sawing, mowing and plowing as any man, besides perfecting herself in all 
the mysteries of woman's work.  She made sugar in the woods and exchanged 
it for groceries; has always done her own milling; hauled saw-logs; woven 
twenty-four yards of heavy tow cloth day after day.  In fact, has done 
both man's and woman's work on the farm, and has probably done more 
manual labor than any living person in Kentucky.  On the 17th of May, 
1831, she married Mark H. Flowers, a North Carolinian by birth, but who 
removed to Tennessee in his boyhood, and there received his early 
training.  They had eight children, only one of whom, Mrs. Elizabeth 
Carr, is now living.  "Aunt Frankie" comes of good old revolutionary 
stock, four grand-uncles on her father's side and three on her mother's 
having been engaged in that struggle.  The Berrys, Carsons, Porters and 
Reads of Butler County are relatives.  Capt. George Berry, who received 
from the government a grant of 4,000 acres of land for services rendered 
in the Revolution, was a grand-uncle.  Her father was in the war of 
1812, and distinguished himself at the battle of Tippecanoe.  In the 
late war she and her husband were firm Unionists, and were active in 
feeding and sheltering soldiers, and their house has been, and is still, 
a stopping place for people from all sections, from New York to Texas and 
from Main [sic] to California.  One incident of war times is well known 
and often repeated: As a company of soldiers was passing her house, she 
mounted her horse, took command of the company, ordered the boys to 
"single file," and with an overflowing basket of provisions, rode along 
the line and fed every man of them.  In this, and all other circumstances 
where large hearted sympathy and practical benevolence were necessary, 
Aunt Frankie has never been found wanting.  But while all esteem her good 
will, there are few who would care to incur her displeasure.  At one time 
a man was preparing to start a distillery in her neighborhood.  Being a 
stanch temperance advocate, she proceeded to raise a company of fifty 
women to destroy the still house.  The information of this reaching the 
ears of the would-be distiller, he dared not go on with the enterprise, 
and the idea was abandoned.  She is also known as a fine botanist and 
herb practitioner; the number of those who have been cured of various 
diseases by her simple remedies are numbered by scores and hundreds.  
She and her husband are members of the Presbyterian Church, she having 
joined the old Presbyterian Church in 1840.

Flowers Furguson Read Berry Carson Porter
=
NC

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/butler/flowers.af.txt