From the Galaxy of Holliman Cousins and Great Uncles and Aunts, 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

This continues the series on Dr. Rhodes B. Holliman and his ancestors and associated families....I am grateful to him for access to his historic photographs of Fayette, Alabama and family.

Below James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), third son of Civil War veteran, John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930).  The photograph below is dated 1896, when James was 18, three years away from marriage to Anne Elizabeth Baker.  They would have two boys who lived to maturity - Cecil Rhodes Holliman and Charles Baker Holliman. 

The year before James married Anne Elizabeth Baker, the Baker family which lived in Newtonville, Alabama posed for this photograph which caught the a southern family in 1898 wearing their Sunday best.  Note James Mutius Baker on the far right in wing tip collar and hat.

 

Back row, left to right: Frances Hillman Baker, George Washington Baker, Anne Elizabeth Baker, Belzy Ann Blakeney Baker, Georgia Bell Baker (babe in arms).  Front row,  left to right: Guyton Baker, Pearl Baker, Frederick Coleman Baker, Montie Lea Baker, Allie Mac Baker, James Mutius Baker.


Below, the Fayette County, Alabama courthouse in 1898.  It was destroyed in the town fire of 1911.

 

Fayette in 1898 was still captured by the cotton culture of the old South as this picture taken in front of the Court House suggests.  Family farmers all over the nation suffered in the 1890s giving rise to the Populist movement which flowered briefly and then faded in Alabama. 

 

Two of James's brothers would work as farmers all their lives. Not James. He first practised law in Fayette, Alabama serving as county solicitor in the 1910s. A horrible fire swept through Fayette in 1911 destroying much of the downtown.

The fire, the inability to advance in a political career running as a Republican in the solid Democratic South and the lure of the Magic City of Birmingham, must have moved James to make an important move around age 40. As with millions of other Americans, north or south, James Monroe Holliman would head to the big city. 

In the future more on James Monroe Holliman and his brother,  however, next post, back to England and our European roots....