The Hollyman English Ancestry Quest 2019, Part 12

by Glenn N. Holliman

More Pictures of Cuddington, Buckinghamshire
A Historic Home of Holymans, Hollymans, Hollimans, etc!

In May 2019, numerous cousins from England, Scotland and the United States, gathered for a weekend to explore the ancestral sites of our fore parents.  Cuddington, Buckinghamshire served as the home of Holymans from at least the 15th century to the dawn of the 20th.  The last of that line, so named, died in the early 1900s and her headstone is now fading gracefully in the church burial ground. 

As the family tree below illustrates, all cousins on this trip had very great grandparents who lived in Cuddington during the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I, famous monarchs whose reigns embraced the War of the Roses to the Reformation to the Battle of the Spanish Armada.

QUICK REMINDER AMERICAN FAMILY TREE BOX

John Holyman, d 1521 of Cuddington begat

John Holyman, d 1533 of Cuddington who begat

Thomas Holyman, d 1558 of Cuddington who

with Dorothy Clark begat

Christopher Holyman, d 1589 of Sherington who

with Margaret Lee begat

Thomas Hollyman, d ca. 1650 of Bedford who

with Helena Poynard begat

Christopher Hollyman, 1618-1691 of Bedford

and Virginia who begat four sons and two daughters

The English cousins on the journey, Rod, Andrew and Lindsay, broke away from this American lineage through another son of Thomas and Dorothy Clark Holyman.  Their ancestors remained in England moving to a neighboring village of Long Crendon, and eventually to urban areas in the 19th century, prospering.

The day we visited Cuddington, we stopped first at Church Handborough to visit the gravesite of one our great uncles, The Rt. Rev. John Holyman, born in Cuddington in 1495.  His memory is perpetuated with a plaque attached to one of the domiciles created from the century old barns that stand adjacent to the current Holyman 1699 thatched cottage.  Bishop Holyman was first ordained as a monk, hence the picture of a monk on the re-purposed barn.

Below is an 18th Century map of the Holyman farm.  The large structure in the middle is where our great parents lived in the 16th Century, and long since deconstructed.  Just to the left on the north side of the courtyard is the current thatched cottage, 1699, and to the left 'C' shaped are the barns and stables.  The above plaque is on an entrance to a home now located in the center of the 'C' shaped complex.  Stone barns, often hundreds of years old, are repurposed and remodeled to serve as luxury homes in  21st Century England. Such is the case on the Holyman farm.

When the time came to move to our next stop, we found our coach could not manage the narrow lanes of Cuddington, so we 'hiked' back to the pub where the bus was parked.  Along the way, we chanced upon a friendly horse. 

Below, my sister from Texas, Alice from Dallas, had to greet the gentle  horse.  What I did not announce at that time but do here, is that the farm land in the deep back ground was once that of the Clark family of Cuddington.  Our great grandfather, Thomas, d. 1558, selected Dorothy Clark as his bride, and one of their sons was named after her father, Christopher Clark.  

And that dear cousins is how the given name Christopher slipped into the family tree, and we all know it was Christopher Hollyman, 1618-1691, who founded the Virginia Hollymans, the line from which most American Hollimans (various spellings) descend.

Next stop  a visit to Dinton, where Christopher Holyman courted  Margaret Lee, and in time became the Grandparents of Christopher Hollyman of Virginia!