From the Galaxy of Holliman Cousins and Great Uncles and Aunts

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Biology Professor who became the Alabama Holliman Family Expert....

No one living knows as much about the Cornelius Holliman (1792-1862) family that migrated from South Carolina to Alabama in 1836 than Dr. Rhodes Burns Holliman of Virginia.  When I started writing this blog 2 1/2 years ago, the first articles on John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930), Martha Jane Walker Holliman (1846-1931) and James Franklin Holliman (1839-1911) were by Rhodes.

Earlier this year I posted a three part series by Rhodes on his summers in Fayette County, Alabama in the 1930s and how different life was then than now in the country.  According to my blog counter, this is one of the most read series that has been posted in this space.

Below, Rhodes at his desk, composing articles and saving photographs of 19th Century family members such as the Hollimans, Blakeneys and Bakers of central Alabama.

 

 

Last posting in this space, I wrote of Rhodes' dedicated physician son, Jim Holliman.  Jim, as does Rhodes, follows in a line of talented ancestors.  Jim's grandfather was Cecil Rhodes Holliman (1902-1986), a distinguished Birmingham, Alabama attorney, who eagerly collected family stories and wrote a major manuscript on the Samuel T. Walker (1821-1900) families. One of Cecil's grandfathers was Samuel Taylor Walker, a Confederate Civil War veteran.

 

Below Cecil Rhodes Holliman as a 1921 cadet at the Marion Military Institute, Marion, Alabama.  Dr. Rhodes Holliman, a specialist in exotic diseases and retired professor from Virginia Tech, acquired his love of family history from his father, Cecil.  This photograph and the one below are from the Rhodes Holliman collection.

 

Cecil's father was the dynamic pioneer of this branch, James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), who married a Fayette County girl, Elizabeth Ann Baker in 1899.  James studied law, served as county solicitor, and later moved to Birmingham to set up a law practice that continues to this day under his great and great, great nephews, Jim and John Holliman, attorneys at law.

Below, James Monroe Holliman in a 1924 photograph, who left the farm run by his father, John Thomas Holliman, and by his wits and enterprise became a successful Alabama attorney.  He sired a distinguished prodigy of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Next post, more on my cousins, great aunts and uncles from this distinguished and successful branch of the Holliman family....