| In 1865, Ira Nelson Fleming (1831-1891), a native of Quebec, Canada,
set out from Manchester, Delaware County, Iowa, for Macon County with his
family — wife Samantha Ann Toney Fleming and children Rose Alice (b.
1858), Charles Arthur (b.1861), and Eleanor “Nellie” May (b. 1863),
settling on a Lyda township farm near the Chariton River and neighbors Dannington
and Gooding.
As they worked the Lyda land, Ira and Samantha had three more children, Frances Amelia (b. 1866), Elmer (b. abt. 1868), and an unnamed infant (b. abt. 1870). To date, Samantha, Elmer, and the baby cannot be accounted for further. In 1873, Ira married Sarah Frances “Fanny” Weatherford Dixon, daughter of John Money and Frances Spraggins Weatherford. Thus, the older Fleming children were joined by Fanny’s children from an earlier marriage, William and Pettie Clara Dixon, and then step-siblings Ira Purl (b. 1874) and Earl Pliny Fleming (b.1880), sons of Ira and Fanny. Later in 1880, Ira, Alice, Eleanor, and Frances returned to Manchester, where Ira resumed his trade as a cabinetmaker, following in the footsteps of his father, Ira Victor. Eventually, he was joined by Fanny, but the couple ultimately separated. In 1883, Charles Arthur married Minerva Etheline Ford, daughter of merchant E. M. Ford in Atlanta, Missouri. Fanny went on to marry John K. Miller, an Iowa farmer, and to live in Colorado, and Ira returned to Canada, where he died.
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