Robert Turner FLEWELLEN, Sr., is the second son of James and Elizabeth Person FLEWELLEN, late of Warren county, GA. In 1821 the parents removed to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where Robert was born, on the 2nd of October, of that year. The family returned to Georgia the following year, settling near the city of Macon, where the father died in 1829, leaving a wife, and four children, with limited means for education and support.

The widow removed to the village of Culloden, in Monroe County, GA, where the subject of this sketch received his literary education, and grew to manhood. He read medicine in the office of Dr. D. H. Hammond and Dr. John C. Drake, of Thomaston, GA. He attended one course of lectures in the Medical College of Charleston, SC, and another in the Medical Department of the University of New York, graduating from the latter institution in the spring of 1845. Returning to Culloden, he begun the practice of medicine the following year, 1846, paying special attention to orthopedic surgery, then in its infancy, as a branch of practice.

In 1848 Dr. FLEWELLEN was married to Miss Carrie Bivens, and in 1850 emigrated to California. In 1853 he removed to Texas, and settled in Washington County, as a planter; was elected to the House of Representatives from Washington County in 1859, and again in 1861 from the district of Washington and Fayette counties. Having become a widower in the meantime, he married, 1860, Miss Eugenia, the second daughter of the late John D. and Eugenia Edwards of Houston.

In 1872 he was elected to the Presidency of the Texas State Medical Association, of which body he has long been a member and presided at the Waco meeting, the following year. In 18?? he removed to Houston, his present abode, and was in 18?? elected to represent Harris County in the Legislature. It was he who introduced, and secured passage by the Legislature for the first bill for the charter of a medical college in Texas; and has ever advocated a high standard of professional character and purity of the profession, and has always insisted upon protection of the practice of medicine by law.

Dr. FLEWELLEN is yet in the prime of his life, and is universally esteemed as a physician and a citizen.

Source: Types of Successful Men of Texas, by Lewis E. Daniel, pub. E. Von Boeckman, Printer 1890