The Hollyman English Ancestry Quest 2019, Part 2

By Glenn N. Holliman

Our First Stop – St. Peter de Merton

Bedford, Bedfordshire

May 18, 2019

We were on an adventure moving back in time.  There were 29 or so of us on that chilly, rainy morning. Our bus met us at 9:15 am on Saturday morning, May 18^th in Moreton in Marsh and took us across beautiful countryside, fields green and yellow flowering horse chestnut trees in bloom and through little villages. There was a bit of rain but it did not discourage our high spirits.

We Hollimans and spouses gathered in Bedford at the spot where 410 years earlier my generation’s 8^th great grandparents, Thomas and Helena Poynard Holliman, were married.  Naturally this called for another group photograph.  This couple were the parents of Christopher Hollyman, our forefather who migrated to Jamestown, Virginia in 1650.

Above the entrance to St. Peter de Merton in Bedford, Bedfordshire. Jim Holliman of Marion Junction, Alabama and Becky Holliman Payne, Cookeville, Tennessee in the picture between the gates.

Genealogist Anne Holmes had arranged our first stop at St. Peters de Merton, a 10^th century church where we received hot tea, biscuits and a history of the parish by one of the lovely ladies who greeted us.

It was here we were transported back in time to 1609, the year and place where my generation’s 8^th great grandparents were married. 

Below the nave of St. Peter Church in Bedford, a parish over 1,000 years old!  Texans Marcia Holliman, Rob Fenske and Mary Holliman Fenske, center, and right, Alice Holliman Murphy take pictures.

Great changes occurred in that first decade of the 17^th Century. 

Queen Elizabeth, perhaps England’s greatest monarch, died in 1603 replaced by James VI of Scotland, James I as he became known in England.  His mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, had lost her head several decades earlier after an attempt to replace Good Queen Bess on the throne. Dangerous business being a monarch in those times.

At the time of the marriage of Thomas and Helena, Jamestown, Virginia struggled to survive, an outpost for the London Company to which Christopher and Judith Hollyman would find a safe harbor 40 or so years later.

The new King James struggled to keep the various religious factions of England and Scotland from harming each other.  A sect of pious Protestants demanded less liturgy and more ‘puritanism’ in the nascent Church of England.  Roman Catholic terrorists led by Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the House of Commons.  Their gunpowder plot failed, and persecution of Catholics was renewed.

   

Guy Fawkes pictured.  To this day the English celebrate this would be tragedy with massive bonfires all over England on November 5th.

On the plus side, the glorious King James Version of the Bible was transcribed at the same time Shakespeare wrote some of his most outstanding plays.  It can be argued these two events were the epitome of English literature, not equaled since.

What do we know of this great grandmother, Helena? 

Not very much.  It was expected that the bride’s church would be chosen for the ceremony, and it did occur at St. Peter because such is recorded in the parish register.  Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chancellor decreed in the 1530s (before he too lost his head) that baptisms, marriages and funerals were to be documented, for which genealogists have been ever grateful.

Foreground, Rob Fenske and Dr. Jim Holliman inspect the chancery where Thomas and Helena Poynard Hollyman were married.

Genealogist Anne Holmes cannot find the name Poynard in other registers in Bedford, a town then of 2,000 souls.  She did find a will dated decades before the marriage by a Thomas Poynard of Barkway in 1563, perhaps a document of our 10^th or 11^th great Poynard grandfather?   We may never know.

We do know that Helena died in 1653 and is buried outside St. Mary’s Church on the south side of the Ouse River in Bedford.  Probably she was in her early 60s, and Thomas, whose death date is not known, evidently passed away before her.

And of course, of her eight living children, two had left the family forever, migrating in 1650 to Virginia, never to return to a mother’s embrace.

We thank the good ladies of St Peter de Merton for their kind hospitality, hot tea and sharing of the history of this famous church.

Next blog, we visit the parish where Thomas and Helena had their many children baptized.

English Hollymans Known Only unto God

by Glenn N. Holliman

The World War I Battlefields of France
Part 1

The Somme

In August 2016, my wife, Barb, and I along with our Pennsylvania neighbor, Russ, visited friends in Normandy, France.  During that sojourn, Russ and I broke away for a few days and toured the British Empire battlefields of the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Ypres.  While on this sobering visit, I put on my genealogy hat and looked for any Hollyman (Holliman) graves.  

DNA testing confirmed that I am  a descendant of Christopher Hollyman (1618-1691) who immigrated to Virginia in 1650 from Bedford, Bedfordshire and a distant cousin of Englishman Lindsay Holliman.  Both of us have paper trails back to the Cuddington, Buckinghamshire Hollimans in the 1500s, and are possibly descended from the High Wycombe Hollymans of the 1300s.  So those Hollimans (Hollymans) who fought in the Great War are, one could easily argue, my distant cousins, and also most of you who are casting your eyes on this page.

I did not find any gravestones, but I found several names on monuments, and in the words of the poet Rudyard Kipling who lost his only son at Ypres, Belgium, they are known 'Only unto God' as their bodies were never recovered.  They were blasted into bits by artillery fire or ground into the mud, never found, never returned to their families or even one of the seemingly countless British Commonwealth cemeteries that dot northwestern France and southwestern Belgium.

It was at the Thiepval Monument at the Somme near Albert, France that I found the first name.  A Book of Remembrance is available at all cemeteries and monuments listing the names on the memorial or graves.

Below, the massive British memorial at Thiepval, a small village on the Somme Battlefield, contains the names of over 73,000 missing soldiers.

Below, the record book and name on the towering memorial for James Holliman, age 21 from Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire, England.  His home  was only 20 or so miles from Christopher Hollyman's domicile in St. Mary's Parish, Bedford, Bedfordshire prior to his 1650 immigration to eventual settlement in Isle of Wight County, Virginia.

This Jim Holliman died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916.  He was killed in the initial advances on German lines.  Almost 20,000, yes, 20,000 British soldiers died on this first day.  This does not count the French who were charging miles away on the right, and of course the Germans who had received an astronomical dose of cannon fire and whose trenches were invaded.  It may well be the most blooding day in the history of warfare.

Before this battle ended in November 1916 there were over 1,000,000 British Empire, French and German casualties.  The lines had only moved a few miles.  This was a four year war, 1914-1918, of attrition in which over 20 million may have died on all fronts.

The memorial wreaths at Thiepval August 2016 on the 100th Anniversary of the horrid Battle of the Somme.

Much has been written on World War I.  

Here are some volumes in my library which I can recommend on the Somme.

Next Posting, the Battlefield of Ypres were two other Hollymans (Holliman) died.