From the Galaxy of Holliman Cousins and Great Uncles and Aunts

by Glenn N. Holliman

This continues the series on Dr. Rhodes B. Holliman and his ancestors and associated families....

Below in 2002, my son, Christopher S. Holliman rendezvoused in Virginia with Dr. Rhodes Holliman, who passed along to Chris a book shelf constructed by Ulyss S. Holliman  (1884-1965) in the 1920s.  Ulyss was Chris's great grandfather and Rhodes's great, great uncle.  Chris is a librarian and Rhodes, a Ph.D. in biology, who chronicles the history of the Holliman family with emphasis on Alabama since 1836.

 

 Rhodes's great grandfather was James Monroe Holliman.  James was the first of the Holliman sons of John Thomas and Martha Jane Walker Holliman to leave farming as a profession and enter a service industry - an attorney-at-law.  Until 1920, half of all Americans, according to the Census of that year, lived in a rural environment.  But the industrialization of the country, the decline in farm prices and more than anything, the rise of modern transportation, revolutionised how people earned their livings,

 

 In the lives of sons of John Thomas Holliman, four of the six left farming for other pursuits at the turn of the 20th Century.  Their father, caught up in the seemingly never ending farm crisis's of the 1890s and 1920s  died in near poverty in 1930 at a time of no Social Security and no modern safety net for seniors.

 

James Monroe Holliman (1878- 1938) was determined to earn his living by his mind and mental talents. He also married well - Elizabeth Ann Baker, a descendant of another Fayette County, Alabama pioneer family.

 

Below, James Monroe and Elizabeth Baker Holliman in October 1899 leave Newtonville, Alabama for their honey moon.  Note the clothing styles and the buggy that carried them away to married life.

 

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The 19th Century pictures above are from the collection of Dr. Rhodes Holliman, who received them from his father, Cecil and grandfather, James Monroe Holliman.  In 1899, the horse and buggy world was about to give way to gasoline and automobiles.  Cruelly, James would die of infection when his finger were caught in a slamming car door in 1938.  He was only age 60, but he left behind a legacy of descendants to carry on the family names and service to the communities in which they lived.

Next post...more on Fayette, Alabama and one of its citizens....