Fielding Oakley by W. D. Ritter

was a Virginian and was with Washington himself in the War of the Revolution. He lived in Taylor township, Greene county, and was the father of the noted NANCY HATFIELD, the grandfather of Captain FIELDING HATFIELD. Mr. Oakley was a large man physically. >

The last time I was at his house he told his wife she cheated him in her age she married him – told her, she was forty years old then. She disputed his word. He then said she was thirty-nine years and seven months old at the time, which she did not dispute. Mrs. Oakley excused herself by saying that young men were scarce and hard to get at the close of the war; that during the war a husband was not to be got at all, and that owing to the fact that she was good to work and make a living, she thought there was no wrong in using a little strategy, a little policy and management, to get a husband; said she had cleared land, made fence, plowed and raised corn, raised flax, pulled it and made it into cloth; had raised wheat, reaped and threshed it. She was a good spinner and weaver, and if her gravestone in Bloomfield Cemetery tells the truth, for she and her husband lie there side by side, she was over one hundred years old at the time of her death. She was a small woman, and one of good qualities, great energy and industry being part of the, From her it was that NANCY HATFIELD, her daughter, inherited the capacity by which she acquired two excellent farms by her own management after she was left a widow. >

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Biographical Memoirs of Greene County, Ind. With Reminiscences of Pioneer Days, Illustrated (1908, B. F. Bowen & Co. Indianapolis, Indiana) Vol. 1 Pg. 98-9 >