Welcome to my Fleek, sometimes spelled Flick, Genealogy Page.  You will find here some stories about the Fleeks of West Virginia, as well as links to a few photographs.  Much of the information on this page was given to me by my grandmother before she passed away.  If you are not interested in the personal story, then go to the bottom of the page and you will find some stats on the Fleeks, as well as a link to a page listing all the Fleeks I have found so far.

I have found at least three different spellings for FLEEK. Although many of the letters I found spelled it Flick, it was sometimes spelled FLEEK and I decided to go with Fleek since additional sources I have found spelled it more often as Fleek.  I found one reference to an ancestor on the internet, and there it was spelled FLEAK.  To make searching in my data base easier, I decided to make all the spellings the same, no matter what...and I ended up choosing Fleek.  However, since I originally created this page before I decided to make them all the same, I think this page uses Flick, but at this point I'm not sure.

So now the story of Susan Umstot (born 1854) and her husband James Henry Flick, as told by her granddaughter and my grandmother, Leoda Haws, continues (from the Umstot Page).  Click on the links to see photographs and additional information.  Please realize as you read what is typed below that the story was told to me by my grandmother, who had her own set of built-in prejudices.  Sometimes her description of a relative was a bit negative.  Her mother had her own set of prejudices as well.  So I do not take everything she told me as the "gospel truth."  But perhaps it will make for interesting reading for you.  My grandmother's story is in italics.

"Well, like I told you, Grandma Susan's family [the Umstots] owned land and businesses and was quite well off.  They weren't very happy with her for marrying Jim Flick [James Henry Flick].  They felt she had married beneath her station.  So instead of giving her lots of land like they did their other kids, she only got five acres.

Susan and Jim built a cabin on the land, and they farmed it.  They had lots of trees, too.  They sawmilled the trees.  All their children were born in that cabin and me and their great-grandson, Paul [Paul Kramer Minnick, son of Leoda (Haws) Minnick].  The back of the cabin set up about a hundred feet from the county road that went between Short Gap and Keyser.  We used to have to walk about a mile to one of the springs in Uncle Gil's fields to get water for drinking and washing and cooking.

Jim and Susan had two boys, Ad and Rob, then they had my mother [Bessie Blair Flick].  Grandma Susan told me that Bessie was a regular tomboy, always running around and climbing trees.  When it came time to go to school, Bessie went to the same little one-room schoolhouse that her mother went to, and I went to that same school until 5th grade.

Well, anyway, the countryside around the cabin was a combination of flat and hilly land.  On one side there was a hill that we used to call Uncle Charley's hill.  It was pretty steep and there was lots of trees on that hill, hickory nut, persimmon, maple.  Most of the Flicks 5 acres was flat.  Out a little ways from the house was a dip in the ground, and Grandpa Jim dug out a little cave there.

The cabin had a big summer kitchen that went across the whole back of the house.  The boards went up and down and you could look through the cracks.  It was never sealed so you couldn't use it in the wintertime.  The rest the cabin was made of logs and was daubed to seal the cracks so you could live there in winter.  In the winter, Grandma Susan would cook over the fireplace in the big room.  There was one long room and it had the fireplace in it.  The fireplace had to heat the whole house.  They had things over the fireplace called dogs, and they put a rod across them and hung big iron pots on it.  They pulled coals down and put big iron skillets on the coals to fry.

Along to the side of the big room was a real long bedroom with two or three beds in it.  Then there was another room where they spent most their time.  They had a dropleaf table in there.  Oh, they had an upstairs too with four or five beds.  The steps going upstairs were real tiny.  They kept most their clothes upstairs.  Grandma Susan had a little closet underneath those stairs.

Company came by quite often, and they'd sleep upstairs.  Grandma Susan would leave and go help people.  She would help anyone who needed it.  She was a midwife.  [Susan Umstot Flick's daughter, Bessie Blair Flick, also became a midwife, and I have in my possession a midwifery book and also some birthing tools.]

Also, when some of the neighbors and family would have a butchering or an apple butter making or a thrashing, Grandma Susan would go and she would take me with her lots of times.  See, whenever there was a butchering, all the farmers would come together and help that farmer with his butchering.  The women would do the cooking and help stuff the sausage.  They would take the guts out of the hog and turn it and scrape it and put it in salt water and clean it.  Then they would stuff the sausage into that.

Sometimes they would put the sausage in a crock.  They'd also make what they called pudding.  They'd put put them in the crock jars and put them in the oven and bake them.  All the grease would come to the top and seal it off.  Then they would tie a clean white cloth over that and tie a brown paper bag over that and that would help seal it too.  Then they'd put it in either their cave or their basement, whichever they had.

Grandma Susan wasn't real religious.  She read her Bible every day.  Now her brothers and sisters, well except for one uncle who turned out to be a drunkard, all sang in the Methodist Church choir.  But Grandma Susan just read her Bible and prayed at home.

[The next part of the story told to me by my grandmother has to do more with her mother, Bessie Blair FLICK Haws, and is on the Haws Page.  There is also a rather lengthy portion that mostly talks about the time Susan UMSTOT Fleek spent with her granddaughter, Leoda HAWS.

James Henry FLEEK (parents names not discovered yet, birth and death dates not discovered yet) married Susan Jane UMSTOT.  Together they had four children, Robert W. FLEEK (born January 10, 1888 and died June 6, 1967), Adam B. FLEEK (born 1/27/1876), Margaret FLEEK (no information), and Bessie Blair FLEEK (born 8/7/1892 and died 8/15/1971).  For additional Fleek or Flick names, go to my Fleek Page Two.

[links to photos to come]
 

GO TO My Home Page

GO TO Umstot Page

GO TO Flick Page

GO TO Haws Page

GO TO Hartley Page

GO TO Minnick Page

GO TO Bingaman Page

GO TO Register Report

GO TO Stuff Page

Please notify the Webmaster (that's me!!!) of any broken links.  Thanks.