John Fleming's death record, 3 November 1853 — reported by his son Eli

A one-page abstract, and the only civil record of John Fleming IV this archive holds. It matters for two reasons: it confirms the man, and it explains where one of the archive’s stubborn wrong facts came from.

Field	Entry
Name in Full	John Fleming
Date of Death	3 November 1853
Place of Death	Arnold’s Creek, Dodderidge County, Va.
Cause of Death	Not Known
Years of Age	73*
Name of Parents	John & A. Fleming*
Where Born	Hampshire County, Virginia*
Consort of	Ann Fleming*
Person Giving Info	Eli B. Fleming
Designation of Informant	Son

* This information is in error from other records and sources. — Robert Earl’s own footnote, and the asterisks are his.

What it confirms

The informant was Eli B. Fleming, son. John Fleming IV’s child list includes Eli B. Fleming, born 28 February 1831 — and here he is, twenty-two years old, giving the county the particulars of his father’s death. That is an independent link between the death and the family, from a contemporary record rather than a chart.

The place and date match exactly what the Family Legacy typescript says: died at his farm on Arnold’s Creek on 3 November 1853. The typescript adds “about six miles west of West Union.”

What it explains

This is the source of “Hampshire County.” An earlier boxed chart gave John Fleming’s birthplace as Hampshire County, Virginia, and the 1998 chart contradicted it with Montgomery County, Maryland. This archive recorded that as an unexplained inconsistency between two of his own charts.

It was not an inconsistency — it was a source disagreement he had already resolved. The death register says Hampshire County; he starred it as erroneous and used Montgomery County, Maryland instead. The early chart followed the record; the later one followed his conclusion.

“Name of Parents: John & A. Fleming” is worth noting on its own. In 1853 the family told the county that John’s parents were a John and an “A.” — which is exactly the four-Johns tradition that Josephine Fleming and Mike Roberts later gave him, and which he retracted in November 1998. So the tradition was already in the family in 1853, a century and a half before he tested it. That does not make it true. It does show it was not invented by twentieth-century hobbyists.

What is wrong with it, and why that is normal

Four of the eight substantive fields are starred as erroneous. Nothing unusual in that: a death register records what a bereaved twenty-two-year-old said at the courthouse, not what a researcher can verify.

• Age 73 implies a birth about 1780; the charts and typescript give 11 October 1781, which would make him 72.
• “Consort of Ann Fleming” names no wife this archive knows. His first wife was Clarissa Roe, who died about 1838; the typescript gives a later wife as Susannah Prunty. Robert Earl also came to think there was a third — “Old John (1781) must have married three times.” An “Ann” may be one of them, or may be Eli’s confusion with his grandmother Nancy Ann.

Source: typed abstract of the Doddridge County death register entry for John Fleming, 3 November 1853, with Robert Earl Wildermuth’s own annotations; in his research papers, in Chuck’s keeping. Photographed 2026.