The 1998 pedigree charts — the Flemings traced to Ballyclare, County Antrim

Five sheets in a different format from everything else in the papers: LDS-standard pedigree charts, four generations to a page, every person carrying a record number, each sheet cross-referenced to the next. All are dated 03-22-1998 and headed with his address at 410 Eagle Circle, Casselberry, Florida, and his phone number.

The date is the point. The boxed “Ancestors of” charts are undated; this archive guessed “c. early 1990s” for them. These are stamped March 1998 — nine years after the memoir, and he was still at it, still printing charts, at seventy-three. They are the latest genealogical output in the papers.

They answer the question this archive had explicitly put on hold — and they carry the Fleming line out of America altogether, to a town in County Antrim.

⚠ He retracted the top of this eight months later

On 27 November 1998 Robert Earl wrote “STOP THE PRESSES!” and withdrew the generations above John Fleming IV: “our John IV (my designation) was not the son of John III of Pennsylvania.” John Fleming Jr. and John Fleming III were to be removed and James Fleming put in their place — which takes Ballyclare, Jean, the Cabin John plantation, the Whites and the Hopkinses with them.

The retraction is here. Read Charts 2, 4 and 5 below as what he believed in March 1998, not as his conclusion. Chart 1 (Sadye), Chart 3 (Bailey/Bartlett) and John Fleming IV himself are untouched by it.

The chain of sheets: Chart 1 (Sadye) → Chart 2 (Lewis Fleming) → Chart 3 (Synthia Bailey) → Chart 4 (John Fleming Jr.) → Chart 5 (Anne White). Each header states which numbered person on which earlier chart it continues from. Whether the series stops at five is unknown; only these five have been photographed.

Chart No. 2 — Lewis Fleming’s ancestry

The header reads “Number 1 on this chart is the same person as No. 8 on Chart No. 1” — so it hangs off the Sadye chart at Lewis’s position.

#	Person	Chart data
1	Lewis B Fleming-0090	b. 1807, Eastern District, Harrison Co., VA · m. 14 Mar 1827, Harrison Co. · d. 1862, Taylor Co.
2	John Fleming IV-0118	b. 11 Oct 1781, Montgomery Co., Maryland · m. 20 Jan 1803, Harrison Co., VA · d. 3 Nov 1853, Arnold’s Creek, VA (W.Va.)
3	Clarissa (“Clary”) Roe-0119	b. 18 June 1782, Essex Co., New Jersey
4	John Fleming III-0191	b. 1744, Montgomery Co., MD · m. 20 Nov 1777, Montgomery Co. · d. 7 Jul 1829, Pike Run Twp., Pennsylvania
5	Nancy Anne Hopkins-0055	b. 1754, Montgomery Co., MD · d. 5 Feb 1827, Pike Run Twp., PA
6	John Roe-0226	b. 1760, Morris Co., NJ · m. 27 Mar 1779, Essex Co., NJ · d. 29 Sep 1829, Harrison Co., VA
7	Susannah Meeks-0601	b. 1770, Essex Co., NJ · d. Harrison Co., VA
8	John Fleming Jr.-0232	b. 1714, Cecil Co., Maryland · d. 25 Dec 1796, Montgomery Co., MD
9	Anne White-0233	b. 1716, Anne Arundel Co., MD · d. 3 Jul 1796, Montgomery Co., MD
10	John Hopkins-0377	b. 1726, Scotland · m. Montgomery Co., MD · d. 1796, Washington Co., PA
11	Eleanor Wallace-0378	no dates

The Flemings are a Maryland family — and before that, an Irish one

This is the substantive news. The earlier boxed chart put John Fleming’s birth in Hampshire County, Virginia; this one puts it in Montgomery County, Maryland, and then supplies three further Maryland generations behind it — back to John Fleming Jr., b. 1714 in Cecil County, on the head of Chesapeake Bay. Chart 4 then takes it to Ballyclare, County Antrim (below). The New Jersey element enters only through Clarissa Roe, and the line also picks up a Scot, John Hopkins, b. 1726.

Five Johns in a row — Sr., Jr., III, IV, and Lewis’s own son John — which is exactly the naming pattern that makes a line like this easy to garble and hard to prove.

It fixes the impossible arithmetic

The earlier chart made Clarissa Roe b. 1762 the daughter of a John Roe b. c. 1758. This archive flagged that as impossible.

The 1998 chart resolves it cleanly: Clarissa b. 18 June 1782, John Roe b. 1760, married 27 March 1779. A daughter born three years into her parents’ marriage, her father twenty-two. The 1762 was wrong.

A new problem replaces it, smaller: Susannah Meeks is given b. 1770 — nine years old at her own 1779 marriage, twelve at Clarissa’s birth. That will be a slip for 1760 or thereabouts.

What it does not settle

The archive’s Lewis Fleming page names his father Edward Fleming of the Simpson Creek farm, a Revolutionary soldier, on the authority of Joy Gilchrist’s The Squires Family — and quotes an 1827 note from Edward to the Harrison County clerk allowing his son “to go out from under my house.”

These charts never mention Edward. By 1998 Robert Earl had settled on John Fleming IV and built four generations behind him.

Two points worth holding onto:

• John Fleming IV died at Arnold’s Creek in 1853 — Lewis’s own settlement. A father dying in his son’s community is real circumstantial support.
• A man born in 1781 cannot be a Revolutionary soldier. If Gilchrist’s Revolutionary Edward is real, he cannot be this John. He could conceivably be a grandfather — though the chart puts John Fleming III, b. 1744, in that slot.

So: still unresolved, but far better characterised. It is now Gilchrist’s Edward against Robert Earl’s fully-built John, and the 1827 consent note in Harrison County remains the document that would decide it.

Chart No. 4 — Ballyclare, County Antrim

Continues from No. 8 on Chart 2. This is the sheet that matters most, and it is nearly empty — three names, two facts, and an ocean.

#	Person	Chart data
1	John Fleming Jr.-0232	b. 1714, Cecil Co., Maryland · d. 25 Dec 1796, Montgomery Co., Maryland
2	John Fleming Sr.-0238	b. Ballyclare, Antrim County, IRELAND (no date) · d. May 1777, Derry Township, Pennsylvania
3	Jean (Unknown)-0475	nothing at all

The Flemings were Ulster Scots. Ballyclare is a County Antrim town settled by Scots planters in the early 1600s — the same plantation stock that produced the great eighteenth-century emigration to the American colonies. The wife’s name, Jean, is itself Scottish rather than English usage, and quietly supports the reading.

The route on this sheet is the classic one: Antrim → Cecil County, Maryland (the head of Chesapeake Bay, a well-documented Ulster landing point) → and on to Derry Township, Pennsylvania, whose very name is Ulster carried over. From there the family worked south and west into Montgomery County, Maryland, and finally across the mountains into Harrison County, Virginia.

One chronological caution. The main Ulster emigration to the colonies is usually dated from 1718. A son born in Cecil County in 1714 puts these Flemings ahead of that wave by four years. Not impossible — there were earlier arrivals — but it is the kind of detail that turns out to be wrong, and it should be checked rather than repeated.

Chart No. 5 — the Whites of Anne Arundel

Continues from person 0233 on Chart 4. John Fleming Jr.’s wife’s family — and, unlike the Flemings, an old English-colonial Maryland family rather than an Ulster one.

#	Person	Chart data
1	Anne White-0233	b. 1716, Anne Arundel Co., MD · d. 3 Jul 1796, Montgomery Cty, MD
2	Robert White-0564	m. 22 September 1709, Anne Arundel Cty, MD · d. April 1768, Prince Georges, MD
3	Anne Burges-0565	d. Prince Georges, MD

A precise 1709 marriage date with no birth or death for the bride is a signature of parish-register work — somebody had read a Maryland church book. Burges is very likely the Anne Arundel Burgess family, prominent in the colony from the seventeenth century, though the chart does not say so and this archive is not assuming it.

Chart No. 3 — Synthia Bailey’s ancestry

Continues from Chart 2. The Bailey and Bartlett side, and it settles two things while adding two more.

#	Person	Chart data
1	Synthia Bailey-0089	m. 14 Mar 1827, Harrison Co. · d. 1849, Western Sector, Harrison County, VA
2	Thomas Bailey-0136	b. Virginia · m. 21 October 1803, Monongalia Co.
3	Nancy Bartlett-0137	entirely blank
4	I.B.Y. or J.B.Y. Bailey-0337	b. 26 May 1732
5	Hannah Thornsberry-0338	b. 1728 · d. 1831
6	Thomas Bartlett-0314	d. June 1836, Preston County, Virginia
7	Sarah-0315	no surname, no dates
12	William Bartlett-0325	b. 1720, Loudon County, Virginia
13	Unknown-0339	William Bartlett’s wife, unnamed

“I.B.Y. OR J.B.Y.” — printed exactly like that, in the name field. Robert Earl could not tell which letter it was and entered the ambiguity into his database rather than choosing. His page can now say so, and it gains a birth date: 26 May 1732.

Hannah Thornsberry lived to 103. Born 1728, died 1831 — the same span the boxed chart gives, so two of his sheets agree. An extraordinary age, and worth doubting on those grounds alone, but he held it consistently.

Thomas Bartlett died June 1836 in Preston County — new, and it moves him east of where the family had settled.

Thomas Bailey and Nancy Bartlett married 21 October 1803 in Monongalia County. That is now a third independent statement of the 21st, against FamilySearch’s 11 October. The Family Group Record and both chart sets agree.

William Bartlett, b. 1720, Loudon County — confirming the Loudoun origin against the Richmond County alternative, and carrying record number 0325, the same ID that appears in the circular-reference error documented there.

One evident data error: Thomas Bartlett’s own marriage is printed as 21 Oct 1803, Monongalia — identical to his daughter’s. A child’s marriage copied up into the parent’s field. Ignore it.

Chart No. 1 — Sadye Fleming’s ancestry

What it confirms

• Thomas Bailey Fleming married Martha Turner 28 August 1851 — matching the county register’s Book 1 p. 66 against the other chart’s 18 August. The register stands.
• Martha Turner d. 11 June 1904, Thomas’s death left blank — the archive’s “no death record was ever found” holds, in his own files, forty-odd years on.
• Lewis B Fleming b. 1807 Eastern District, m. 14 Mar 1827, d. 1862 Taylor County; Synthia Bailey d. 1849 — all as held.
• Sadye married Earl Adam 31 December 1921. That is now a third chart saying 1921 against the archive’s 31 December 1920. Worth a look at whatever the 1920 came from.

Martha Turner’s father has an initial

John D. Turner-0516, with every other field blank — and beside him, chart position 11, “WIFE UNKNOWN”-0518. Robert Earl had a record number for a woman he could not name. John Turner’s page can take the D.

Conflict: this chart gives Martha Turner born March 1832 in Harrison County; her page says Wood County, and the other chart agreed. Two of his own charts disagree. Recorded, not adopted.

The Dunbar problem — and it is a real one

Two things on this sheet cut against the archive.

First, John V. Dunbar gains a death and loses four years. The chart gives him b. 1808 and d. 22 November 1884 at Parkersburg, West Virginia. His page has b. ca 1804 from the 1850 Readfield census — where he is aged 46 — and no death at all. The death is new and valuable; the 1808 conflicts with a census the archive can point at, so 1804 stands until someone checks.

Second, and much more serious: this chart does not name Martha Kelley as Verona’s mother. It gives:

6 SETH G DUNBAR-0087 — b. 1837, Readville, Kennebec, Maine · m. 29 December 1860, Wood County, Virginia 7 SARAH J. HENRY-0527 — b. 1841, Jefferson County, Ohio · d. Wood County, W.Va.

The archive’s account, from the Wildermuth & Bain book, is that Verona Belle was the daughter of Seth Dunbar and Martha Kelley, that the two never married, and that Verona was raised by Martha’s sister Deborah (Kelley) Sheppard — which is where the Sheppard surname comes from.

Nothing about that survives on this chart. In its place is a wife, a wedding nine years before Verona’s birth, and a different woman from Ohio.

The archive is not changing. The book gives censuses, a named adoptive aunt, and an explicit statement about the non-marriage; the chart gives two lines with no sourcing. But this cannot be waved away either, because it is Robert Earl’s latest word and he was closer to these people than anyone now living. Three possibilities, none yet testable:

1. Sarah J. Henry was Seth’s wife, and Martha Kelley was not — the book is wrong, and the Kelley-Sheppard adoption story is a family misremembering.
2. Sarah J. Henry was Seth’s wife, and Martha Kelley was not his wife but was Verona’s mother — both are true, and the chart simply puts the wife in the mother’s box, which is a very common thing for pedigree software to do.
3. Robert Earl had the wrong Seth Dunbar for the 1860 marriage.

Option 2 is the one to test first, because it reconciles everything: it would make Sarah J. Henry a real person — Seth’s actual wife — while leaving Verona’s illegitimate birth to Martha Kelley intact. If so, the archive is not wrong, merely incomplete, and Seth Dunbar had a wife nobody here had heard of.

The Wood County marriage records for 29 December 1860 would settle it in an afternoon.

(The chart’s “Readville, Kennebec, Maine” is his consistent spelling — “Readyville” on the other chart. The town is Readfield, per the 1850 census.)

And James Wesley’s birth year, again

b. 20 December 1857. Robert Earl used 1857 on every chart he ever made. The archive uses 1855, because he died in October 1940 recorded as age 84, which 1857 cannot produce. The archive’s reasoning stands, but it should be said plainly that he never agreed with it.

What the five sheets add up to

Robert Earl’s last known genealogical statement, at seventy-three, put the maternal line like this:

Ballyclare, County Antrim → Cecil County, Maryland (1714) → Montgomery County, Maryland → Derry Township and Pike Run, Pennsylvania → Harrison County, Virginia (1803) → Arnold’s Creek → Wood County → Marietta, Ohio.

Set beside the Kelleys of County Wicklow and Kildare and the Scot John Hopkins, it makes the maternal side substantially Irish and Ulster-Scots — a counterweight to the German Wildermuth, Boeshar and Schlicher lines on the other side of the same family. Chuck’s grandmother Sadye sat at the junction of the two.

None of it is proved. These are database printouts with no sources on the page: no register cited, no deed, no will. Where they touch a document — the 1851 marriage register, the 1854 deed, the 1850 census — they hold up well, which is a reason to take them seriously. It is not a reason to treat Ballyclare as established.

What would establish it: Cecil County, Maryland land and probate records for a Fleming c. 1714–1740; the 1796 Montgomery County will of John Fleming Jr. (he died 25 December 1796, and his wife Anne five months earlier, so an estate file is likely); and Derry Township, Pennsylvania records for a John Fleming dying May 1777.

Source: five LDS-format pedigree charts, Chart Nos. 1–5, submitted by Robert Earl Wildermuth of 410 Eagle Circle, Casselberry, Florida, all dated 22 March 1998; in his research papers, in Chuck’s keeping. Photographed 2026. Ballyclare’s Scots-planter settlement from Ballyclare, Wikipedia.