Two Fleming county records — the 1851 marriage and the 1854 deed

Two primary records that Robert Earl Wildermuth pulled from county courthouses and filed together under FLEM-12. Between them they document the two events that set up Thomas Bailey Fleming’s adult life: the marriage, and the farm.

1. The marriage, 28 August 1851

MARRIAGE RECORD — Document #92, FLEM-12 1851 THOMAS B. FLEMING, Book 1; Page 66. Wood County Record of Marriages, Wood County Court House, Parkersburg, West Virginia

Date Married: 1851 – August 28 · Minister: Francis Guthrie · Names of persons married: Thomas B. Fleming and Martha Turner

Small but load-bearing. The groom is entered as Thomas B. Fleming — the B is Bailey, his mother Synthia Bailey’s surname carried as his middle name, and the reason the Bailey line is traceable at all through the Flemings. The record gives the date, the county, and the officiating minister, Francis Guthrie.

2. The deed, 15 September 1854

Doddridge County Deed Book 2, page 484, marginal heading “Lewis Fleming to Thomas B. Fleming — Deed for 50 acres of ground on Burnt Cabin Slope.” Robert Earl filed both the photocopied page and his own full typed transcript of it:

“This deed made the 15th day of September in the year 1854 between Lewis Fleming and Mary his wife of the first part and Thomas B. Fleming of the other part witnesseth that in consideration of One Hundred Dollars them in hand paid … do grant unto the Said Thomas B. Fleming all of a certain tract or parcel of land lying on Burnt Cabin Slope a drain of Arnold’s Creek in the County of Doddridge beginning at a chestnut oak Corner to Lewis Fleming Farm … to the beginning containing Fifty acres…”

Signed Lewis Fleming, with a second seal beside his — the wife’s, her name not written out.

A father selling his son fifty acres of his own farm for a hundred dollars. The boundary begins at a chestnut oak “Corner to Lewis Fleming Farm” and runs off in poles — 119, then 63½, then 10¾, 42, 116, 30 — the son’s land cut directly off the father’s.

“Mary his wife” is the confirmation. Lewis married Synthia Bailey in 1827; she died about 1849, and he then married the widow Mary Lake. A dower release names the wife of the moment — so this instrument independently corroborates both Synthia’s death before 1854 and the second marriage the family record had already reported.

Lewis acknowledged the deed before JoSeah H. Bee, a justice of Doddridge County, and it was admitted to record 7 May 1855, “Teste F. D. Hickman, Clerk.”

(Two oddities in the record as transcribed: the justice certifies a deed “bearing the date the 1st day of September 1854” though the deed itself is dated the 15th, and his certificate is dated “this 1st day of September 1984” — a slip of Robert Earl’s typewriter.)

The deed of trust, same page, 7 May 1855

The moment the deed was recorded, Thomas mortgaged the land.

“This Deed made the 7th day of May in the year 1855 between Thomas B. Fleming of the one part and Francis D. Hickman, Trustee of the other part … all that certain tract or parcel of Land lying on Burnt Cabin Run a drain of Arnold’s Creek … it being the Same Land that was conveyed by Lewis Fleming to Said Thomas B Fleming, in Trust to Secure the payment of the Sum of Seventy five Dollars to John W. Cumberledge on the 7th day of May 1856 with interest from this date … that in case he Should make default … the property above described Shall be Sold and disposed of according to the Sixth Section of the One hundred and seventeenth Chapter of the Code of Virginia.”

Eight months after buying the farm from his father for a hundred dollars, Thomas borrowed seventy-five against it — three-quarters of the purchase price — repayable in one year. He was twenty-five, three years married, with the first children coming.

The clerk who recorded the trust deed signs himself F. D. Hickman; the trustee is Francis D. Hickman. In a county of that size in 1855, almost certainly the same man, acting in both capacities on the same day.

What the two records fix

• Marriage: 28 August 1851, Wood County, minister Francis Guthrie — confirming the date in the biographical sketch from the county register itself.
• The farm: fifty acres on Burnt Cabin Slope, a drain of Arnold’s Creek, Doddridge County, bought from his father 15 September 1854 for $100 and recorded 7 May 1855. Per the sketch, roughly ten miles west of West Union.
• The debt: $75 to John W. Cumberledge, secured on the same fifty acres, 7 May 1855, due in a year.
• Lewis’s second wife: named in a legal instrument, in 1854.

Source: Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research papers, FLEM-12; Wood County Record of Marriages Book 1 p. 66, and Doddridge County deed book p. 482. Photographed 2026. Companion document: the Thomas Bailey Fleming biographical sketch.