Fleming Web Introductio

Nothing is so firmly believed as that we least know Montaigne

I started working on the family history and genealogy of my ancestors in 1965. This was two years after my father died. His parents separated when he was about five and he knew little about his Clifford ancestors. One picture and a few stories was all I knew about my grandfather, Hugh McCune Clifford. And I knew nothing about Hugh’s ancestors. This was the source of my interest in my ancestors (Clifford, H. F. 2003. Cliffords, from New Jersey to Pennsylvania and beyond, with special reference to the ancestors and descendants of Charles and Jane (Gordon) Clifford). Priority Press, Edmonton, Alberta, 778 pages). At about the same time I started gathering material on my mother’s ancestors, the Flemings. I was able to examine my Fleming grandparent’s list of names and newspaper clippings, started probably by my great grandparent Flemings, John S. and Hannah Jamison Fleming, and added to by grandparents, William and Josephine Lytle Fleming. At the time I started, both my Fleming grandparents were deceased, and the Fleming material was in the possession of my uncle John L. Fleming. I benefited greatly from conversations with my uncles, John L. Fleming and William H. Fleming, Jr.

In 1999 I wrote The Oil Creek Flemings of Venango County, Pennsylvania, with related families McClintocks, Culbertsons, Jamisons, Lytles, Morrisons, Watsons and Hendersons, Volume 1, 586 pages, and Volume 2, 466 pages. The two volumes are now out of print. The 2008 web version (updated) includes minor updates, and pertains only to the surname Fleming, presented in this web site and to the McClintocks presented in another web site.

2008 update: Web sites for all eight surnames have now been completed. They are
Oil Creek Flemings.
Oil Creek McClintocks and Culbertsons.
Oil Creek (and Westmoreland County) Jamisons.
Oil Creek Lytles.
Oil Creek Hendersons.
Oil Creek Watsons and Morrisons.

In North America, the history of our Fleming-line ancestors, at least from about the turn of the nineteenth century, is centered in western Pennsylvania, mainly the Oil Creek valley of Venango County. These places are far from Edmonton, Alberta, where my children grew up. In addition, their generation is several generations removed from interesting and sometimes exciting events of western Pennsylvania, events so important to our family’s history. I am thinking especially of the birth of the petroleum industry. But there were other events also having a rich family tradition. I hope by writing about these happenings that my children and other relatives of their generation might appreciate their importance to our family’s history and remember them to their children.

Our Flemings were one of the first families to move into the Oil Creek area of Venango County, Pennsylvania, having been in Venango County since before the turn of the nineteenth century. There is valid documentation that Daniel Fleming (son of John) was in what was to become Venango County between 1798–1800.¹ Undoubtedly his brother Andrew was there at the same time. By the mid–1830s, another large Fleming family, the “Sugarcreek Flemings,” with no known connections to our Flemings, were in the central part of Venango County, mainly Sugarcreek Township. We know that our Flemings came to Venango County from Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Before that, it is a matter of family legend, with no known proof of origin.

Today, with families scattered, the traditional verbal passage of family lore and ancestral information from generation to generation is mainly a thing of the past in North America. Hopefully, what is presented here will some day be considered valuable by my descendants and other relatives and at least will be informative to workers with an interest in the many Fleming lines. Possibly in the future, someone with an interest in genealogy, and with the time and resources, will fill in the many gaps in our genealogy evident from this treatise

Oil Creek Flemings

and related families

Introduction