Farmer
After being mustered out in the West, Consider Flower initially returned to Ionia County. He made his home in the village of Muir, approximately 6 miles from Ronald, where he had lived before the war.
<Hotchkiss affidavit refers to him trying farming, but Flower refers to work he did from 1866 to 1871 as requiring little exercise. Joseph Patterson, who met Flower in 1868, reported his trade as carpenter and builder, but that Flower's injury by that time prevented him doing that work. In her response to the Pension Department, Hotchkiss claims that Flower was a carpenter and builder before entering the service -- NB many sawills in area, brother-in-law Volney Belding had operated one; also Volney and Consider's brother William listed as carriage makers in 1863 - so farm work may have involved or been supplemented by carpentry>
His family remained in this area of Michigan. By 1870, his parents, and his brother William, had relocated to seperate households in the town of Lyons, a mile south of Muir.
William listed his occupation as jeweller, rather than a famer, in the census that year, and lived with his wife and six-year-old daughter Lillie. Flower's sister Louisa and her family were Otisco in the 1860s, but don't appear in the 1870 census and may have already left for Kansas, where they were living by 1878.
