Wardwell Clement Flanders's brother, Benjamin Franklin Flanders was a Republican Reconstruction Governor of Louisiana from 1867 to 1868.

From Rose Severs Meyerson:

        I have an autobiography of W. C. Flanders, Recollections of a Sea Captain's Life, written in 1886. He states that he was born in 1811 in Landaff, State of New Hampshire. His father was Joseph Flanders, a Captain in the Volunteer service in the war with Great Britain in 1812 and 1813. Joseph moved to Bristol, N. H. at the close of the war. W. C. Flanders eventually settled in New Orleans.
        I remember my mother (Maggie Louise Goos Severs) telling of her grandfather, the Captain (W. C. Flanders), going to the French Market and to meet the boats coming in at the wharf in New Orleans, where he would buy whole stalks of bananas and other foodstuff in large quantities.

The autobiography gives a Flanders Family record:
        Stephen Flanders, the founder of the family, was admitted a townsman on the 3rd of Feby 1650 of Salesbury, N. H. It was voted 3rd of Feby 1651 that certain persons (52 in all) should be accounted commoners or townsmen, and amongst them appears the name of Stephen Flanders. We learn by tradition that he was from Flanders (France) and that he married Jane, whose Indian name was Sandusky, and was converted to Christianity and named "Jane," and that he was an infant picked up on a battlefield in Flanders by an English soldier and taken to Salisbury, England – and named Flanders – for the Country on which he was found.
        At probably 20 years of age when he immigrated to America.
       In 1587, Philip of Spain established the Inquisition in Flanders, which provoked an insurrection. William of Narrau, Prince of Orange came to help the Netherlands, but they could not withstand the forces of Spain. Elizabeth sent 4,000 troops and aided the Netherlands, which were soon recalled. Peace was declared in 1598.