&
Mary Catherine Mentch
Families
The Holmes at home in Home, PA
Madge Alberta Holmes & Harry Blair Fleming 1885 ~ 1976
My memories are mostly limited to my mother's side of the family to when they lived on Bennett's Farm where Harry Blair Fleming worked as caretaker after losing his farm near Clymer, PA during the great depression.
More information shown in Obit. Source: Genealogical Collection of Indiana County, PA, FJL Film # 517258 - Provided to me by Linda Fleming. Pen Run, PA - Data obtained from family Bible. Madge Alberta H0LMES Fleming, Born August 24, 1888, Clymer, PA. Died Indiana Hospital, Indiana, PA, Burial at Sample Run Cemetery, Clymer, PA (Father: Dorcie D. HOLMES, Mother: Mary Catherine MENTCH.
There are so many missed opportunities and none so sad as having had a moment in time, when one could have communicated to another, . . . but it was missed. That special day when my grandfather, Harry Blair Fleming, sat with me on our front porch in Dixonville, PA, and he, kind of off-hand, said to me, "I floated logs down that stream." I recall it as if it were yesterday. Yet, in my youth, I did not see or even think of the history in that one statement. Dixon Creek is now but a ditch one can jump without getting your feet wet. Why? What was going through my mind those many years ago that I couldn't and didn't ask a simple question - "That Creek!" "How?"
Today, as far as this writer can tell, I am the only one of the Flemings left that even cares. My mind is a rush of questions and unsolved mysteries about the HOLMES, MENTCH and FLEMING Clans. I ask questions of the young and receive no answers. Am I being repaid in like kind in that back then I didn't care enough to ask a simple question. Where did you cut these logs. Where did you float them too. Who was your father, granddad? What did he do? Where did you live back then?
Today researching these now ancient families seems a bit like panning for gold dust at Virginia Beach, VA. I have ask the questions and have received no answers. All that is now left is the bits and pieces this writer has been able to glean from more sources on-line than I can now remember. All I now am left with, besides these small morsels of information is a faint and fading memory of my ancestors on my mother's side. She, Hannah Jemima FLEMING, seemed to have a really warm spot in her heart for her HOLMES and MENTCH parents and other ancestors in those two lines. I have noted much in several places in our sites and will not carry the lamentation on at this point. I do, however, simply repine and ponder, "What if . . . ?"
NOTE: The RootsWeb Families presently under construction. Not all pages formatted. Please be patient!
Bob Craig
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