The Doddridge birth register — and the Hampshire County thread

Three sheets. The first settles a question this archive raised only hours ago.

“John W.” — the birth certificate was right

The Doddridge County birth register, transcribed by name, date and parents. Robert Earl starred the entries belonging to his own line — Thomas & Martha Fleming:

Child	Born	Parents
Margaret	15 Feb 1854	Thomas & Martha Fleming ★
John W.	20 Dec 1857	Thomas & Martha Fleming ★
John	25 Oct 1866	Thomas & Martha Fleming ★
Levennia	20 Oct 1868	Thomas & Mollie Fleming ★

The child born 20 December 1857 was registered “John W.”

When his certified birth certificate turned up earlier today it read “Jno. Wesley Fleming,” and this archive flagged it as an open question — Jno. being the standard abbreviation for John, against every other source calling him James Wesley. The register settles it: the clerk who issued that certificate in 1984 was reading the book correctly. He was entered as John W. Fleming, and James is a later family usage that stuck.

Which also explains why two sons were registered as John — John W. in 1857 and John in 1866. The family called the first one Wesley and the second one John, and the register keeps no such distinction.

And “Mollie” for Martha on the 1868 entry — a pet form of Mary, used loosely for Martha, and Robert Earl starred it rather than silently correcting it.

Other Fleming households in the same register include Eli & Elmira Fleming with five children between 1853 and 1866 — Eli B. Fleming and Elmira Anna Kinney, raising a family on Arnold’s Creek — plus a Lewis & Susan Fleming (daughter Samantha, 1866), Thomas & Cassandra, Thomas & Lydia, John & Harriet, and Edward & Mary. Nearly every couple in John Fleming IV’s child list appears here with children of their own.

A candidate for the death record nobody could find

At the foot of the marriage sheet, under “Death in Wood County”:

FLEMING, THOMAS J — 5 May 1910 — 75 yrs — Farmer

Thomas Bailey Fleming is one of the few direct ancestors here with a documented life and no documented end — “No death record could be found for Thomas,” as Robert Earl wrote and as this archive has repeated.

This may be it. He was last seen in Wood County at the 1900 census, aged seventy, renting a farm. Here is a Fleming dying in Wood County in 1910, described as a farmer.

Two things don’t match, and both are recorded rather than explained away:

• The age. 75 in May 1910 implies a birth about 1835. His birth is February 1830, which would make him 80.
• The middle initial. Thomas J., where he is Thomas B. in every county record — though the initials in this family wander freely (the informant on Martha’s death record is F. T. Fleming where the typescript calls him Floyd B.), and a Thomas J. Fleming donated the Fleming-Gain Cemetery land.

A five-year error in a stated age is entirely ordinary in this family’s records — the same archive holds an “age 84” for a man of 82 and an “age 40” for a man of 72. Worth ordering the full Wood County entry. If it names a father or a spouse, it closes a gap Robert Earl left open for twenty years.

Early Harrison County marriages, and a circled note

From Some Early Harrison County, Virginia Marriages 1784–1850:

• James Fleming & Mary Whitehair — 8 Feb 1821 (the archive has had 1820 and 13 Feb 1821 for this; the index gives the 8th)
• Samuel Bartlett & Mary Fleming — Oct 1824 — with Robert Earl’s own circled annotation: “father was James Fleming”
• Samuel Fleming & Mary Fleming — 25 Jan 1820
• Andrew Flemming & Mary Flemming — 18 Sep 1828 — “father Andrew”
• John Fleming & Mary A. Fleming — 12 Apr 1838 ✓
• John H. Bartlett & Sarah Fleming — 19 Nov 1827
• Thomas Fleming & Ann Wood — 29 Oct 1804 — “father John Wood”
• Thomas Bailey & Lucinda Reynolds — 2 Jun 1835

Two Bartlett–Fleming marriages, in 1824 and 1827, on top of the Bartlett–Bailey marriage the archive already has. And the circled “father was James Fleming” is him marking the James Fleming connection as significant, years before he acted on it.

Also here, from a Hacker’s Creek Journal reunion in 1982: Lewis S. Fleming (1844–1918) and Susan J. Rollins (1846–1916) — matching Lewis Simpson Fleming exactly.

And two starred Taylor County deaths: Thomas Bailey, b. 1809, d. 26 May 1888 of paralysis at Fairview, a farmer; and Nancy Bailey, b. 1826, d. 19 Dec 1883, aged 57 years 2 months 24 days. These are a generation below the Thomas Bailey who married Nancy Bartlett in 1803 — most likely a son and daughter-in-law carrying the same two names forward.

The Hampshire County thread

Notes taken from Maxwell and Swisher’s History of Hampshire County (1897) — read, he records, at the Orlando library, the same SAR collection that supplied his Maryland material.

This is him working the Hampshire County angle, and it matters because the 1795 deed has a James Fleming “of the County of Hampshire” buying the Simpson’s Creek land, and because John Fleming IV’s death register gives Hampshire County as his birthplace.

What he pulled out:

• A 1820 Virginia census list of Flemings by county, and it includes John — HMP and Patrick — HMP: Flemings still in Hampshire County in 1820, alongside clusters in Frederick and Harrison.
• Samuel Fleming, private, among the Hampshire Guards (Company K) at the time of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry.
• Colonel R. E. Fleming, ordered in November 1864 to march from Burlington to Moorefield to try to capture McNeill’s Rangers.
• Colonel William Fleming, at the Battle of Point Pleasant, 6 October 1774, “later Governor of Virginia.”
• A James W. Fleming of Mill Creek, born 1854, farming 282 acres three miles east of Purgitsville — described in the county history as “of German ancestry,” which for a Fleming is odd enough to be worth a note. Almost certainly a different family.

None of that is his line, and he does not claim it is. But the 1820 census entries are the point: Flemings were in Hampshire County across exactly the years that matter, which is what you would expect if a James Fleming came from there to Harrison County in 1795 and a son of his was born there in 1781.

Sources: typed transcript of the Doddridge County, West Virginia birth register; handwritten abstracts of Some Early Harrison County, Virginia Marriages 1784–1850*, of Taylor and Wood County death records, of a Hacker’s Creek Journal (1982), and of Maxwell and Swisher’s* History of Hampshire County (1897) — all from Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research papers, in Chuck’s keeping. Photographed 2026.