Henry Ossian Flipper

The Colored Cadet at West Point Henry Ossian Flipper

He and his mother were the property of Rev. Reuben H. Lucky, a Methodist minister of that place. His father, Festus Flipper, by trade a shoemaker and carriage-trimmer, was owned by Ephraim G. Ponder, a successful and influential slave-dealer. In 1859 Mr. Ponder, having retired from business, returned to Georgia from Virginia with a number of mechanics, all slaves, and among whom was the father of young Flipper. He established a number of manufactories in Atlanta, then a growing inland town of Georgia. He married about this time a beautiful, accomplished, and wealthy lady. "Flipper," as he was generally called, had married before this, and had been taken back alone to his native Virginia to serve an apprenticeship under a carriage-trimmer