Lewis Fleming

Lewis Fleming is the deepest Fleming ancestor Robert Earl Wildermuth pursued in his research, and the one who defeated him. In his comment preserved in the Wildermuth/Bain family book, Robert Earl wrote:

“Lewis Fleming remains almost an enigma to me. He left very few civil records and his is a very difficult trail to follow.”

He was born about 1807 — no birth record survives; the 1850 Doddridge County census fixes the year — on his father Edward Fleming’s Simpson Creek farm in eastern Harrison County, then part of Virginia. (Joy Lea Gilchrist’s The Squires Family names Edward as a Revolutionary soldier.)

The 1827 marriage and the move to Arnold’s Creek

In 1827 Lewis gained his father’s written permission to marry — Edward sent a note to the “Clearke” of Harrison County allowing his son “to go out from under my house” — and on 14 March 1827, with the further consent of her parents, he married Cynthia (Synthia) Bailey, daughter of Thomas Bailey and Nancy (Bartlett) Bailey, Cylis Hickerson officiating. The Baileys and Bartletts were old Virginia families — and the Bailey Family Group Record in Robert Earl’s own research papers now carries that side back two further generations, to J.B.Y. Bailey and Hannah Thornsberry, and to Thomas Bartlett and a wife recorded only as Sarah.

Soon after, Lewis and Cynthia moved west to the Arnold’s Creek area in the Western District of Harrison County — the district that in 1863 became Doddridge County. The 1830 census places him there. In 1852 he bought 222 acres from Joseph and Jacob Gratz; he and his second wife later sold 50 of them to their son Thomas at Burnt Cabin Slope. Arnold’s Creek is the settlement where James Wesley Fleming — Sadye’s father — would be born in 1855. The GEDCOM confirms the descent Robert Earl could not trace: Lewis’s eldest son Thomas Bailey Fleming (b. 1830) was Wesley’s father — so Lewis is Wesley’s grandfather and a documented direct forebear of this line.

Two wives, and a family split by the war

Cynthia died about 1849; Lewis then married Mary Lake, a widow with three children. His documented children were:

• With Cynthia Bailey: Thomas Bailey Fleming (b. February 1830; m. Martha Turner 1851), Nancy (b. ~1835), Mary Ann (b. ~1844; m. Henry Middleton Jenkins 1863), and Lewis Simpson Fleming (b. 5 May 1844; m. Susan Jane Rollins 1865; d. 1918) — and, per Gilchrist, John, who served in the Union Army, and Patrick, a Confederate.
• With Mary Lake: Luvanah D. Fleming (b. ~1852; m. Henry H. Knight 1875).

That one son wore Union blue and another Confederate gray is the sharp local truth of the West Virginia hill country in 1861–65, where the new state itself was born of the split.

Late in life Lewis and Mary moved back east to Taylor County, leaving son Lewis Jr. with Lewis’s brother James; the 1860 Taylor County census lists him at 53, occupation “gentleman.” No death record has been found; unverified family sources place his death about 1862, in the war years.

He is Chuck’s maternal 4×-great-grandfather on the Fleming line: Lewis → Thomas Bailey Fleming → James Wesley Fleming → Sadye → Robert Earl → Terrie → Chuck. The enigma Robert Earl left open — his own descent from this “difficult trail” — the GEDCOM has since closed.

Source: Wildermuth/Bain family book — Fleming section, including Robert Earl Wildermuth’s own research comment and Joy Lea (Gregoire) Gilchrist, The Squires Family, p. 357. Transmitted by Chuck Eesley 2026.