[1] After his graduation in 1846, at twenty two years of age, he was given a position in the engineering service of the Bavarian Government, his first employment being on works for the improvement of the River Rhine.

Encouraged by the success of the French Revolution of 1848 which drove out King Louis Philippe I, the longings of the German people for a freer and more united government found such vigorous expression that the princes of the many petty states into which Germany was divided acceded to the convocation of a National Assembly or Parliament, which, in May 1848, met in Frankfurt to frame a constitution for United Germany.

Unfortunately the deliberations of this assembly showed such wide differences of opinion and so little ability to unite in any workable plan that the ardor of the more conservative classes began to cool.

It was not long, however, before he entered the engineering service of the Erie Railroad, then under construction, his headquarters being at Dunkirk, New York, at the extreme western end of the road.

After its completion to Pilot Knob, where for a number of years it ended, he became land and tie agent of the railroad company, with headquarters at Arcadia, Missouri.

[1] Upon the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Captain Flad came to St. Louis and enlisted, June 15, as a private soldier in Company F, of the Third Regiment, United States Reserve Corps.

In August of the same year he was detailed by General Frémont, then in command at St. Louis, for service in the construction of fortifications at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where he remained for several months.

In October of the same year he was employed in repairing the same railroad east of Corinth under General Sherman and was with him at Cherokee, Bear Creek and Iuka in northern Mississippi.

But, besides running counter to some private interests, it involved such a large outlay and such a radical departure from the old plan that on the part of many leading citizens as well as the city authorities it encountered an overwhelming disapproval.

Meantime Mr. Kirkwood had been commissioned to go to Europe to study the subject of filtration, and Colonel Flad was left as acting chief engineer.

In December, 1866, a revised plan, with intake and settling basins at Bissell Point and a distributing reservoir on Compton Hill, substantially as afterwards built, was presented.

[1] Whilst he was still acting as assistant engineer to Mr Kirkwood, Colonel Flad made the acquaintance of Captain James B Eads who was at that time employed upon plans for gun carriages and turrets.

The rooms occupied by the Water Board being larger than they then needed, Captain Eads, upon his request, had been granted space in which to set a draftsman at work.

This was followed by frequent discussions between the two men upon engineering questions, and this led to a mutual recognition of each other's abilities and laid the foundation of a lifelong friendship.

As the duties of the latter, as member of the Board of Water Commissioners, did not require all his time, this opportunity to take part in this most interesting and important work was gladly accepted, and he retained his connection with it until its completion in 1874.

[1] The problem to which the new board addressed itself was that of taking the whole system of municipal public works out of the mire of politics and placing them upon the basis of merit and fitness.

The new policy of deepening the low water channel of the river by dredging rather than by contraction works, which the commission adopted during his membership, was very largely the result of his efforts.

[1][2] His death occurred June 20, 1898, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he stopped on his way home from a meeting of the Mississippi River Commission to visit Mr Godfrey Stengel, a lifelong friend who had come with him on the same ship to America forty nine years before.

His unassuming modesty, his perfect candor, and simplicity, his unflinching courage, his absolute fidelity to his convictions, his single minded subordination of personal to the public welfare, qualities which were written in every line of his face and manifested in every act of his life, all stamped him as a man of the highest type.