Since the days of the establishment of the new flourishing city of Quanah Edgar I. Flynt has been influential in its development and gradually increasing prosperity, liberally contributing to the establishment to the establishment and maintenance of its institutions and to the best interests of the public in general. He is now well known to the residents of the vicinity as the county surveyor, abstractor and real estate dealer. He is a native of Madison county, Alabama, and a son of Amasa and Mariah W. (Clark) Flynt. The father had his nativity also in Madison county, where the Flynts were an old established family, the grandfather of Edgar I, having located there from North Carolina in the early part of the nineteenth century, becoming one of the honored early pioneers of Madison county. Amasa Flynt was a Confederate soldier during the period of the Civil war, and after its close came with his family to Texas in 1868, the home being established in Burleson county, in the part which has since become the county of Lee. There they resided for two years, on the expiration of the period removing was made to Erath county, and from there in 1877 Amasa Flynt was called to the home beyond. His business career was devoted of Lincoln county, Tennessee, and is now living at Vernon, Texas.
In Erath county, this state, Edgar I. Flynt grew to years of maturity and gained his education in the schools of Stephenville, in the high school of which city he made a specialty of mechanics with the view of later taking up the profession of surveying. In 1886 he came to the new town of Quanah, Hardeman county, which was organized in 1885, and although a young man he is thus numbered among the city’s pioneers. He has surveyed land all through this county, thus becoming thoroughly familiar with the lands of this and surrounding counties, and in 1890 he was elected to the office of county surveyor, at that time his jurisdiction including what is now Foard county (now a separate county) until the organization of Cottle county, to which position he has ever since been re-elected, and at the present time is surveyor of Hardeman county. He has the honor of serving in a public capacity longer than any other man in the county save one. Mr. Flynt has the only set of abstract books in Hardeman county, these having been compiled by himself, and he is also extensively engaged in the real estate business. During the past ten years he has been the agent for all railroad lands in the county, for sale, and in addition represents a number of individual land owners. He is the owner of a ranch of two sections in Hardeman county, nine miles northwest of Quanah. He has in every way proven himself a public-spirited citizen, and possesses the public confidence to a remarkable extent.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. I, pp. 321-322.