March 22, 1896
My dear Cousin,

........ In the first place, I read your letter to Nick and Harry Fleek one evening when Harry was over and they decided at once That I should not go to West Va. as they wanted to go themselves, and decided then and there to take their guns and go down, do some hunting and get acquainted with the folks. A few days ago I received a letter from Malvina [Fleek] advising me to write to Samuel Umstot as he would be more apt to know family history than anyone else down there. So I wrote, and in a short time I received such a nice long letter. Said his grand father (our great grandfather) was in the Revolutionary War, but in the War of 1812, his father and uncle Philip hired substitutes (see how they degenerate), so that they had no military record for that war. By the way he spells his name Umstot - it seems to me father used to spell it Umstadt, and I am sure Clark Wright's wife whose mother was a daughter of Abram Umstodt of ......ville, O. spells it so, "What's the matter with the d in the Va. relative's name?"

July 7, 1896
My dear H. Clay,

Now you know you gave me the address of Mr. Arthur Fleek and said he was going out to Wisconsin during the winter. Well I wrote him explaining who I was, and all that, and asked him to stop on his way to or from Wis. and make a visit, but I have never heard a word from him, and of course don't know whether he made you a visit or not. I had some questions saved up to ask him, which perhaps you will know something about. I have been asked repeatedly to join the "daughters of the American Revolution" and am all right on one side as one of my Herron ancestors on my mothers side was "in it", but I want to know now if any of the Fleeks or Umstadts (I don't know how to spell it) were ever in the war, or did they emigrate after the war was over? ........ Some one told me a short time ago, that when he was in Texas some time ago, there was a large tract of land, owned by a man named Fleek, which was near a town which had grown into a large city, and I don't remember the name of it and that it must have become very valuable. Now was that uncle Isaac or some other Fleek? ....