Reed Blakeney, a Remembrance

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Blakeneys, Bakers and Hollimans of Old Alabama....

Reed Blakeney of Social Circle, Georgia died this past July 4, 2019 after almost 91 years of living.  He left us a large legacy of remembrances on the complexity of the Old South.  Both Reed and I are Alabama born, although he is a generation ahead of me.  I got to know Reed through my closer cousin, Rhodes B. Holliman.

Reed and the late Rhodes Holliman (1928-2014) were close and shared numerous trips to Fayette County, Alabama cemeteries looking for graves of Blakeney, Baker, Holliman, and other kinfolks.

Rhodes was a biologist, a professor at Virginia.  Reed, a retired businessman, but had a wonderful way with the English language.

Picture is of Reed Blakeney and Glenn Holliman, 2013

If you look back to my August 4 and 18th, 2013 blogs, you will read of my visit with Reed, a gentleman of the New South, born in the segregationist age and leader into the increased human diversity age of the 21st Century.  I love his book Sipsey, named after the river that runs through Fayette County and borders the original Blakeney and Holliman farms of the first half of the 19th Century.

Living adjacent to each other and travelers from the same part of the Carolinas, the two families mixed and mingled and that's how, by marriage, I am related to Reed.

To find the Reed Blakeney articles or any other in this blog, look to the bottom left column of this page, and in alphabetical order of first names (not surnames), go down the list.  Or go to www.bholliman.com, click to the Records page and type in Blakeney in the search box.  Up  will come a myriad of Blakeney manuscripts and research.

Below, 1958, five generations. Sitting is Belzy Ann Blakeney, and left, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Baker Holliman, Cecil R. Holliman, his daughter, Cecile Holliman Youngblood, and grand daughter, Cecile Youngblood Brown.  Cecil R. Holliman is the father of  Rhodes B. Holliman and the grandfather of Dr. Jim Holliman.

To bring this story together, Dr. Jim Holliman presented me on July 20, 2019 with a cane he had inherited through his father (Rhodes) from his great grandmother, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Baker Holliman (1879-1975), wife of James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), one of my great uncles.

The inscription reads  "This walking stick was owned and used by Anna Elizabeth Baker, wife of James Monroe Holliman, Birmingham, Alabama. She died September 1975."

Left, Jim Holliman, M.D., shows me the inscription while his wife, Karen, looks on.  Physician Jim advises me that with my chronic back problem, I am soon be using the cane!

Examine Blakeney, Baker and Holliman  relationships and one has many stories of Fayette and Jefferson County, Alabama families.  

Let's close with a picture of Reed and his second wife, Donna in 2013. 




Reed has left us stories and poems and we are richer for his work. - GNH

When We Were English, Part LIV

by Glenn N. Holliman

A Final Look at the Will of Thomas Hollyman, 1558

This is the last part of the Will of the person whom I believe to be my 10th great grandfather, Thomas Hollyman of Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, England.  My 10th great grandmother was Dorothy Clark.  Let's study this section for the secrets it might reveal to a family historian.  Click on the Will text twice and it should enlarge.

Above the village lane in Cuddington leading to the Holyman farm house and estate. November 2012

 

Line 36, 37, 42 and 45 - Thomas revealed he had lands in locations other than the village of Cuddington.  This is a remarkable acquisition of property since his father died in 1533.  Hadham and Hartwell are a few miles of Cuddington, but Rousham is in another county.

While Thomas made additional arrangements for most of his children, he did not further mention son Christopher, who is my 9th great grandfather (so evidence indicates).  Hmmm...rather than believing Christopher was an unfavored child, perhaps Thomas was a minor.  However, Christopher's later marriage to another leading Buckinghamshire family, the Lee's of Dinton, would ease his way in the world.

Above the interior of St. Nicolas Church in Cuddington.  Although the chairs are 20th Century, the pillars and baptismal font are 13th Century.  Below the floor may lie the remains of 16th Century Holymans.

Line 54 - It was common to name one's sons after their father and grandfathers.  We note one child named John and the son, Christopher, a name that continues in the family to this day.  Where did that name come from?  My belief  is the name is from Dorothy Clark's father, Christopher, who is identified as Thomas' father-in-law in the Will!

My continuing thanks to genealogist Anne Holmes for her work in translating these 16th Century wills.

Next Holyman's in the first Elizabethan age....



Have questions about Holliman family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at Hollyman-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the Hollyman Family Facebook Page located on Facebook at "Hollyman Family". Post your questions and perhaps one of the dozens Holyman cousins on the list will have an answer. For more information contact Tina Peddie at desabla1@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

Since early 2010, I have been publishing research and stories on the broad spectrum of Holliman (Holyman) family history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ . For stories on my more immediate family since the early 20th Century, I have been posting articles since early 2011 at http://ulyssholliman.blogspot.com/ .

Let's save the past for the future! If you have photographs, letters, memorabilia or research you wish to share, please contact me directly at glennhistory@gmail.com. Several of us have an on-going program of scanning and preserving Holyman and related family records. Don't just let your aunt or uncle's genealogical work languish unread and deteriorating in an attic.Write us please and tell us of your items.Thanks to the Internet, we are able to scan, upload to the web (with your permission) and return the materials to you. - GNH

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....