Reflections Concerning Isaac Holleman, Part 2

 by Glenn N. Holliman

This reflection continues our exploration into the life and times of Isaac and Ann Gray Holleman, a biracial couple who challenged the strict norms and laws of post Civil War Virginia.  In my previous article I acknowledged and do so again the serious research by Susan G. White, a descendant of Josiah Holleman (1771-1848), who has discovered new facts about this amazing story.  

Susan has prepared a valuable timeline of the events in the life of Isaac.  With this information, I have integrated photographs from a visit of Isaac descendants and several of us in the lineage of Christopher Hollyman (1618-1691), the ancestor of most Hollimans (various spellings) in the United States.  

The parents of Isaac are not known.  At least one Federal census records him as of a mixed race.  Was his mother an African American held in bondage and his father, a man, perhaps a slave owner?  DNA tests have not yet provided us that information.  As early as the 1680s, Virginia law forbade sexual relations between those enslaved and White persons.  As historical and DNA records show, numerous White males through the generations ignored this restriction.

Timeline for Isaac Henry Holleman (1818-1897 ca) by Susan G. White, Hollyman Family Historian

1810       Josiah Holleman owned 9 enslaved people

1811       He bought 2 more, woman Harty and girl Lavinia

1818      Birthdate of Isaac Henry Holleman, according to Freedman’s Bureau record

1820       Josiah Holleman owned 15 enslaved persons, including 9 males

Isaac was born on the original property purchased by Christopher Hollyman in 1684, land that remains in the Holleman family to this day.  The current owner, Billy Joe Holleman, opened wide this ancestral property to a large gathering of Hollemans in 2016 and again he graciously welcomed our group in March 2022.  Josiah Holleman was a 4th great grandson of Christopher's.  One of Josiah's sons, Joel, served as a U.S. Congressman.

Left to right, Tammy Hunt, Susan White, Billy Joe Holleman and Isle of Wight historian, Jim Henderson, on the Holleman farm near the Mill Swamp Baptist Church in IOW county.  This stop one of several on March 12, 2022.  

 

1823      Malinda Pretlow born, Free Person of Color, daughter of Free Black parents             

1830      Josiah owned 14 enslaved persons, including 8 males, 3 ages 10-23

The Holleman House constructed in the 1830s by Josiah Holleman on original land of Christopher Hollyman (1618-1691). It is not unrealistic to imagine young Isaac Holleman had a hand in constructing this federal period structure.     

 1836       Isaac, age 18, emancipated, via Josiah’s petition to the court.  

1840       Josiah’s census listing shows 1 male Free Person of Color, age 10-23, 1 female Free Person of Color under 10, and 8 enslaved beings.   

1848      Josiah died with many debts.  Isaac sold back into slavery for $355 by executor Isaac Cofer, to    Richard A. Urquhart, a very wealthy plantation owner who lived at Strawberry Plains,  8 miles from Josiah’s home.  Malinda’s father, Moses Pretlow, is on list of Josiah   Holleman’s  debts, in Josiah’s handwriting, of being owed $2.76. 

            Fear and Stress in Pre-Civil War Society

            A decade before Josiah's death, the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion occurred in nearby Southampton County resulting in the death of any many as 55 persons.  This incident terrorized the White south as it fulfilled the greatest fear of slave owners!  Night patrols of anxious local authorities road at night insured no enslaved persons stirred from their homes without permission.

            A generation prior to the Civil War, the tobacco economy of Virginia suffered as the soil worked in earlier generations was exhausted of nutrients.  Josiah's indebtedness at death is a vivid example of the increasing economic challenges of Virginia enslavement plantations to be profitable.  Nearby Richmond had become a slave trading mecca where tens of thousands of human beings were sold at auction.  

            In many. many cases persons were separated from their families and homes and literally in chains marched hundreds of miles to the newer, soil rich plantations in Alabama and Mississippi. This nefarious system shattered the unity of African-America families, their security and fragile culture.  The ramifications of this evil institution ricochet through American society to this day.        

          Questions and Thoughts to be Considered

                                                   Nonnie Holliman and Sandi Royal

            On our way back to Richmond, Susan White, Sandi Royal, Nonnie Holliman and I speculated  on several issues in this story.  As I wrote years ago (click on name of Isaac Holleman in left column), pre-Civil War IOW of Wight County was an uneasy, largely agrarian, society of slave plantations, yeoman White farmers with no persons held in bondage and numerous Free Persons of Color. 

         1. Why, when Isaac received emancipation in 1836, he was again enslaved by 1848 and sold to pay Josiah's estate debts?  Had Isaac, who as a Free Person of Color with very limited civil rights after legal emancipation, violated a law, a slave code of the time, and as punishment forced back into to bondage?  There are cases of this happening.

            2. We noted Josiah owed money at his death to Moses Pretlow, a free person and father of Malinda, Isaac's first wife.  There then was some integrity in a system that recognized contract law even with free African-Americans who navigated a precarious legal and societal existence.

            3. Moses was the father of Malinda Pretlow, who 'jumped the broomstick' with Isaac and bore him at least three children, perhaps two others.  'Jumping the brook stick' literally was the folk custom of marriage of enslave persons prior to establishing legal rights after the Civil War.   

            Left to right at the Pretlow farm near where Malinda Pretlow lived are Doris Knox and Tammy Hunt, direct descendants from Isaac and his first wife Malinda.  Far right is Nonnie Holliman, descended from Isaac and Ann Gray Holleman.  The empty house in the background was constructed ca 1870 during the Reconstruction Period.

               Malinda lived approximately a mile (as the crow flies) from the Holleman plantation eventually living separately from her father.   This couple had three children before the Civil War which evidently led to their separation. 

At the Pretlow farm, current owners Mary Leatherwood and Adrian West shared an aerial photograph of the property as it looked in the early 20th Century

How did the couple sustain a relationship that resulted in children, separated as they were by some distance and legal status?  At age 30, Isaac had to move to Strawberry Plains, a farming community of over 100 enslaved African-Americans, miles away from Malinda.  Perhaps this doomed the marriage?

Next article more information and yet more questions on this story of 19th Century America, an America that had yet to live into its creed of liberty and justice for all. Only a Civil war would give Isaac and millions of others 'a new birth of freedom.'-GNH