Early history of Greene County to be showcased at Flenniken Family Reunion
CARMICHAELS – If you currently live, or have ever lived, in Greene County, there is a good chance your name now is or has been at one time: Armstrong, Baily, Bryan, Crago, Dodd, Gideon, Hartley, Hathaway, Kerr, McMinn, or Stilwell. If not, you have undoubtedly been related to someone by one of those family names.
According to John Flenniken of Bloomingdale Ohio, many prominent family names in the local community are linked to the Flenniken line and you are most likely a Flenniken family descendant.
All descendants of the Flenniken line are invited to participate in the fifth biannual Flenniken Family Reunion, which will be held at the Uniontown Holiday Inn and Conference Center Aug. 16-18.
The first “all-descendants” reunion was held in Natchotiches, Louisiana in 2005; the second in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 2007. The third reunion was in Tyler, Texas in 2009 and the last was in Knoxville, Tennessee in 2011. Western Pennsylvania has been an especially significant region in the history of the Flenniken family since the mid-1700s and this gathering of the clan will showcase the early history of Greene County.
“In August 2013, descendants from across the country will return to the home of their ancestors to meet their ‘cousins’ to exchange genealogy notes, photos, stories, family histories, and to visit places of family interest, libraries, courthouses, and cemeteries,” Flenniken said. “I have been compiling the genealogy and history of the Flenniken family since 1991. A printout of my entire genealogy of the Flenniken Family is 2,351 pages long, including an index of 25,331 names.”
The Flenniken family has been an important and vital part of Greene, Washington, and Fayette counties for over 250 years. Since the mid-1700s, eleven generations of descendants of John Alexander Flenniken (patriarch of the Northern Branch) and James Flenniken (patriarch of the Southern Branch) have participated in building the local community, the state, and the nation.
William F. and Mary A. Flenniken, whose son Earl T. Flenniken left a sum of money in his will to open the Flenniken Memorial Library in honor of his parents in Carmichaels, was from the John Alexendar Flenniken line – northern branch family.
One of their descendants from the southern branch, John Flenniken, was a member of Captain James Jack’s Company of North Carolina Militia and he was named as delegate to the Mecklenburg convention of May 20, 1775, which adopted and signed what became known as the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Thus, John became a participator in and a signer of the first formal notice to Great Britain that her American colonies would attempt to become free and independent of her tyrannies.
John, the signer of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, left North Carolina about 1783 after the death of his first wife during childbirth, with two of his children – Samuel, age 10, and Dorcus, age 7; the youngest, Adley, age 5, remained in North Carolina with his mother’s people – and came to Pennsylvania, where he married Hannah McClelland and raised a family of nine more children, including Robert P. Flenniken, appointed by Pres. James K. Polk, in 1846, as Minister to Denmark.
On Feb. 9, 1796, Greene County was separated from Washington County by approval and signature of Governor Thomas Mifflin. On March 17, 1796, John Flenniken was one of four men commissioned Associate Judge of Court of Common Pleas, Greene County, Pennsylvania. The Hon. John Flenniken died Dec. 14, 1810, and is buried in the Glades Cemetery near Carmichaels.
In the house directly across what is now Route 88 from the Glades Cemetery, Albert Baird Cummins was born on January 15, 1850 (there is a memorial marker at the location today) a son of Thomas Layton and Sarah Baird (Flenniken) Cummins.
Cummins became a lawyer after graduating from Waynesburg College in 1869 and he was admitted to the bar of Illinois in Chicago in 1875 where he practiced for three years. In 1878 he moved to Des Moines, Iowa, and soon attained prominence in his profession and politics. He became a member of the State Legislature of Iowa in 1888 and Governor in 1902, serving for three terms. In 1908 he was elected to the United States Senate to fill the unexpired term of Senator Allison, and was reelected for the regular full term of six years in 1909. He was twice reelected for full terms and continued to represent his State in the Senate of the United States until his death on July 30, 1926
For information about the Flenniken Family Reunion, contact John Flenniken by mail at 1010 Township Road 262, Bloomingdale, OH 43910; by telephone at 740-543-4053; or by email at mdfjff@eohio.net.