Fleming, Bartholomew

Passed: 1887-01-24

Age: 82

Source:

Death Notice:

Obituary Date: 1887-01-24

Information:      RAVENSWOOD'S OLDEST SETTLER HAS PASSED AWAY.  Monday night Janury 24th, 1887, about half past nine o'clock, the messenger of death come to Bartholomew Fleming and he fell asleep in Jesus.  For many weeks Mr. Fleming had been growing weaker and more feeble so that his friends and family knew the end was not far off.  Father Fleming would have been eighty-three years old on April 21, next, having been born in 1804.  He was a Pennsylvanian by birth but moved to the present site of Ravenswood in his sixteenth year in 1820.  When he camped here not a stick of timber had been cut of the woods that marked the site of our present town.  His nearest neighbors were Elias Nesselrode living at the mouth of Little Sandy and David ____ry of near Silverton.  His first wife, Elizabeth Seely who died ______ a few years leaving one son, Francis Ferriman Fleming, still living here.  His second wife was Hannah Warth to whom he married in 1833 and _______ for over fifth-three years has walked hand in hand with him. Mr. Fleming leaves a wife, eight children and twenty-three grandchildren.  He was raised a Presbyerian but was for many years an ___rnest and consistent  member of the M.E. Church, South, of this _____, his wife having been the first member of any church in Ravenswood.  Soon after he settled here Mr. Fleming established the ferry at this point and he, his .................   Another clipping found with additional information: GONE TO REST FLEMING--Monday evening at 9:30 o'clock, Jan. 24th, 1887, at his residence in Ravenswood, West Va., Bartholomew Fleming, in the eighty-third year of his age. Mr. Fleming was one of our firm, honorable, and social old-timers, who came down the Ohio river keelboating in the year 1818, when a mere youth, only 14 years old, and two years later left his place of residence where Alleghaney City now is and located at Ravenswood, where he has resided continuously to the time of his death.  He engaged in merchandizing about 1837 as a member of the firm of Fleming & Stanley, the second firm doing business of that kind in this section.  He also kept a ferry and woodyard at this point the greater part of his life, the ferry dating back to 1831, which was controlled by him up to within a year or two, since which time his son-in-law has had control. He sold thousands of cords of wood to the early steamers which so numerously plied the Ohio's water in years gone by, and was favorably known by boatmen from the spring heads of the Ohio to the Mississippi's mouth.  He and a Mr. Holmes brought the first wharf boat to Ravenswood in 1844, having purchased it near Marietta.  The first voting place, at the close of the famous campaign of 1840, was in the residence of the above subject.  In earlier days he was of a rugged disposition and weathered hardship in its various phases; had an iron will and could not be turned from the right, as he saw it; was of a social nature, and in his declining years it gave him great pleasure to sit down with a friend, old or young, and talk of the olden time.  But he has gone to rest, in death, and while we close these few sentences his remains are being conveyed by loving friends to the M. E. Church, South, where funeral service is to be held, after which burial will take place in the village cemetery.