The Hollyman English Ancestry Quest 2019, Part 9

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our 7th Stop
Cuddington, Buckinghamshire

May 19, 2019

Our coach arrived in Cuddington, Buckinghamshire at lunch time, and we soon overwhelmed the local pub, The Crown.  Standing outside, left is Jim Holliman from Alabama, USA, Rod and Andrew Holliman of England (brothers) and far right, Lindsay Holliman, now of Scotland.  The lassie is Kathleen Holliman, Jim's wife.

Below, The Crown, thatched roof and whitewashed, dates from the 17th Century, approximately the time Christopher Hollyman left Bedford for Virginia.  Christopher's grandfather, the first Christopher, probably left Cuddington for Sherington in the early 1580s if not before.

The pub management is not without humor.  The picture below reminds visitors that dogs on leash are welcome in English pubs, an arrangement that especially seems cozy on cold, long winter nights in the British Isles.

Below, we have a map of Cuddington, a village of perhaps 900 souls, similar in size for a millennium.  Bottom center, #17 is the pub.  We walked a block or so to St. Nicholas Parish Church, #1, where Holymans were baptized, married and buried for centuries. 

At the top of the map, the Holyman's farm is labeled, the home of the family for hundreds of years.  We walked there after the church visit and later back to the pub area as the streets were too narrow for our coach.

                                                   QUICK REMINDER 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

Next, a visit to St. Nichol's were Holymans were interred not only in the grave yard but on occasion in the church itself, an honor reserved for a few.

The Hollyman English Ancestry Quest 2019, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Hollymans Gather in the Cotswolds

May 17, 2019 

Above, at the Royal Hart Hotel courtyard in Moreton in Marsh, Gloustershire, England, Hollyman cousins from Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, New Jersey, Indiana, Florida, Alabama, California, North Carolina and the countries of the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Italy gather on May 17, 2019, the first night of a tour of Hollyman (various spellings) ancestral sites in England.

Left to right, front row are Glenn Holliman, Alice Holliman Murphy, Rebecca Holliman Payne, Allen Holleman, Marcia Holliman, Mary Lippo, Di Holliman and Madeleine Holliman.  Second row, Lindsay Holliman, Paul Holliman, Susan White (in front of Paul), Bryan Holliman, Matthew Holliman, Marshall Cocke, Ann Holliman Krueger, Alison Holliman Marlowe, Kimberly Holliman, Teresa Holliman, Mary Ann Holliman Fenske, Rob Fenske, and Dr. Jim Holliman.  Third row, in the blue shirt, Glenn and Kathy Joiner, Elisabeth Krueger Ahrens, Karen Holliman, and Kathleen and Jim Holliman.

First Some Background....

Since 2009 upon retirement, I have been seeking information on the paternal ancestry of my Holliman surname.  Birmingham, Alabama (b 1946) is my birthplace and that of my late father, Homer Bishop Holliman (1919-2018).  He told me his father, Ulyss (1884-1965) and grandfather, John Thomas (1844-1930) were from Fayette County, Alabama located near the Mississippi border.  Beyond that Dad had no further information.

With the advent of the internet and time to explore, I discovered the research of Ron Holliman in Dothan, Alabama (a second cousin) and shortly thereafter of Cecil Rhodes Holliman (1902-1986), my father’s first cousin, and his son, Dr. Rhodes Burns Holliman (1928-2014).  Through conversations and emails with Rhodes, I found Glenda Norris, Tina Peddie, Joseph Parker, Lynn Holliman, Maxine Wright, Jeanette Holiman Stewart, Allen Holleman, Jim and Karen Holliman and some wonderful second and third cousins in and from Fayette County.  In 2011, the children of Walter O. Holliman (1927-2003) posted to me 20 boxes of their late father’s prodigious research, over 50 allied families!  I am still scanning and uploading this work.

Along the way, my daughter Grace introduced me to ‘blogging’ and having a bit of my father’s writing bug, I began to record first the stories of my father and his six siblings.  There are 18 first cousins from this generation, and those who could shared letters and photographs for the articles which have been posted since 2010 at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com and http://ulyssholliman.blogspot.com/ .   A few years ago, my stepdaughter, Cyndi, created a virtual archive where I have uploaded over 3,000 manuscripts and records donated by relatives noted above.  That site is at www.bholliman.com.

 Above at the Crown Pub in Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, brothers Rod and Andrew Holliman and Lindsay, their second cousin.  Rod and Andrew live in west England and Lindsay now in Scotland.  In 2013 DNA testing comparing Lindsay of English descent to Glenn N. Holliman, Alabama born, confirmed their paper ‘trails’ that both descend from Thomas Hollyman, d 1558, of Cuddingdon. Thomas was the great grandfather of Christopher Hollyman, 1618-1691, who immigrated to Virginia in 1650.  This Christopher is the ancestor of almost all Hollimans in the USA.

Before long, distant cousins found my web sites and inquiries tumbled in, expanding my knowledge of the extended family and introducing me to some wonderful people interested in our common heritage.  The list is now over 100 email addresses.

During excursions to England I found, with the help of the late Roger Smith, the late Fred Cooper, Jayne Sullivan, Bob Hollyman-Mawson, Lindsay Holliman and genealogist Anne Holmes the ancestral record of Hollymans from the 14^th to the 20^th century in the United Kingdom. 

Eventually I was led to the Hollyman farm in Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, now owned by Caroline and James Stonham, pictured below in front of their 1699 thatched cottage on the site of the 15^th Century Hollyman manor.  This kind couple have welcomed many Hollimans to their historical home.

Last autumn, my two sisters, Becky Holliman Payne and Alice Holliman Murphy, asked if I could take them to the English sites.  As several distant cousins had asked also for a tour, I asked why not offer an organized quest for all who wanted to view the discoveries made over the past decade? 

Above, my sisters Alice Holliman Murphy and Becky Holliman Payne in the garden of the Hollyman 1699 home, now owned by the Stonham family in Cuddington, Buckinghamshire.

Hence May 17-19, 2019, 25 American cousins made the trip over and we were joined by three English cousins – Lindsay and wife Madeleine, Rod and wife Di, and Andrew, all with the last name Holliman, all of us descended from Thomas Hollyman, d 1558, of Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, England.

So with this background, let us proceed to the next blog, peel back the centuries and discover our English heritage and those whose DNA we carry. - GNH

The Passing of Rhodes Holliman, Ph.D.

by Glenn N. Holliman

We lost one of our best family historians this morning - Dr. Rhodes Burns Holliman (1928-2014) of Dublin, Virginia.  For decades, Rhodes taught biological sciences at Virginia Tech., himself a Ph.D. in infectious diseases from Florida State University.  April 29, 2014, after months of ill health, he slipped away with his loving wife, Phyllis Anne Holliman, by his side.

Since retirement, Rhodes had indulged in his love of family history, building on the voluminous research of his father, Cecil Rhodes Holliman (1902-1986).  Much of what many of us know of the Alabama and Carolina Hollimans comes from the work of this marvelous father and son duo of family historians.

Rhodes was my second cousin.  His father, Cecil, was my father's (H. Bishop Holliman, 1919) first cousin. All of us were born in Alabama.  In March 2012 in this spot, I published Rhodes' memories of summers and weekends in his beloved Fayette County, Alabama.  These articles on rustic life in the 1930s have attracted more readers than almost anything that has been published in this space in the past four years since inception.

 A number of you reading this column know Glenda Norris, a niece of Rhodes, the daughter of Cecile E. Holliman Youngblood (1937-2012), late of Alabaster, Alabama. Below with her hand on her Uncle Rhodes is Glenda,who has helped conduct the 2011 and 2013 Holliman Family Forums in Fayette, Alabama. Rhodes, her uncle sits at the table in Birmingham, Alabama with another niece, Susan Youngblood Corley, behind him.  His sister, Cecile is also at the table in this 2007 picture.  

Glenda, an avid student of Holliman and her associated families such as the Bakers, Burns and Blakeneys, remembers her grandfather, Cecil, pecking away in the 1960s on his manual typewriter, laboriously recording family stories.

The work of Rhodes and his father, their manuscripts, files and photographs, he generously shared with me.  I have scanned and uploaded the bulk of this vast family material to the Hollyman/Holyman MyFamily.com site.  


The genealogy work of Rhodes and Cecil is not in vain nor stored forever in some attic, forgotten by future generations.  It is available for researchers as long as the web exists.   

That is what Rhodes asked me to do, and that is what I have done. I have done the same with the Walt O. Holliman manuscripts entrusted to me by his children.  And some day, I hope someone will do the same for me with my family histories and research.   Family, pass it along....

Below, the writer with his cousin, Rhodes, April 2013 in Dublin, Virginia.

Rhodes his survived by his wife of many years, Phyllis Anne Holliman, a son and good friends of mine, Jim Holliman, M.D. and his wife, Karen, of Hershey, Pennsylvania.  There are four grown grandchildren, one great grandson and three nieces.  Rhodes was predeceased in death in 2008 by another son, Daniel Rhodes Holliman, M.D.  Two other lovely people in Rhodes' life are brother-in-law Dennis  Jackson and Clare Fugate, the mother of two of his grand children.

 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!).

Join your many cousins at MyFamily.com and view an expanded Holliman family tree and many files on the history of the family.  Just write to glennhistory@gmail.com for an invitation. Or go to the HOLLYMAN GENEALOGY MyFamily site at http://myfamily.com/group/hollyman. Then click on "Request to Join" in upper righthand corner!

From the Galaxy of Holliman Cousins and Great Uncles and Aunts

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Biology Professor who became the Alabama Holliman Family Expert....

No one living knows as much about the Cornelius Holliman (1792-1862) family that migrated from South Carolina to Alabama in 1836 than Dr. Rhodes Burns Holliman of Virginia.  When I started writing this blog 2 1/2 years ago, the first articles on John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930), Martha Jane Walker Holliman (1846-1931) and James Franklin Holliman (1839-1911) were by Rhodes.

Earlier this year I posted a three part series by Rhodes on his summers in Fayette County, Alabama in the 1930s and how different life was then than now in the country.  According to my blog counter, this is one of the most read series that has been posted in this space.

Below, Rhodes at his desk, composing articles and saving photographs of 19th Century family members such as the Hollimans, Blakeneys and Bakers of central Alabama.

 

 

Last posting in this space, I wrote of Rhodes' dedicated physician son, Jim Holliman.  Jim, as does Rhodes, follows in a line of talented ancestors.  Jim's grandfather was Cecil Rhodes Holliman (1902-1986), a distinguished Birmingham, Alabama attorney, who eagerly collected family stories and wrote a major manuscript on the Samuel T. Walker (1821-1900) families. One of Cecil's grandfathers was Samuel Taylor Walker, a Confederate Civil War veteran.

 

Below Cecil Rhodes Holliman as a 1921 cadet at the Marion Military Institute, Marion, Alabama.  Dr. Rhodes Holliman, a specialist in exotic diseases and retired professor from Virginia Tech, acquired his love of family history from his father, Cecil.  This photograph and the one below are from the Rhodes Holliman collection.

 

Cecil's father was the dynamic pioneer of this branch, James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), who married a Fayette County girl, Elizabeth Ann Baker in 1899.  James studied law, served as county solicitor, and later moved to Birmingham to set up a law practice that continues to this day under his great and great, great nephews, Jim and John Holliman, attorneys at law.

Below, James Monroe Holliman in a 1924 photograph, who left the farm run by his father, John Thomas Holliman, and by his wits and enterprise became a successful Alabama attorney.  He sired a distinguished prodigy of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Next post, more on my cousins, great aunts and uncles from this distinguished and successful branch of the Holliman family....

From the Galaxy of Holliman Cousins, Part III

by Glenn N. Holliman

"Medicine is the Venue to Peace"

Over dinner in July 2012, Dr. Jim Holliman of Pennsylvania, son and grandson of family historians, Dr. Rhodes Holliman and Cecil Rhodes Holliman, Esq., shared the above wisdom.  The occasion was an evening with Jim and our two wives, Karen - his, and Barb, mine.  We had been trying to find time to meet for several years.  With Jim's incredible schedule of travelling and speaking, this had been difficult.

Below, Glenn Holliman, left, and Jim Holliman, right.  John T. Holliman (1844-1930) is Glenn's great grandfather and Jim's great, great grandfather.

Jim is this country's and probably the world's foremost expert on Emergency Medical Trauma, having written six books on the subject, and visited 50 countries on six continents practising and establishing emergency medicine programs, teaching and supervising.  Raised in the stimulating home of two professors at Virginia Tech in the 1960s, he did his undergraduate work at Duke and gathered his M.D. at George Washington in St. Louis.  After residency in Utah and practise in Reading, Pennsylvania, he settled in 1989 in Central Pennsylvania at the famed Hershey Medical Center.

Since then he has served in three wars for the Department of Defence, taught at the United Services University in Bethesda, Maryland, and directed the Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine.  Presently he is president-elect of the International Emergency Medicine Consortium, a global organization of regional and national agencies dedicated to improving emergency medical care.  The walls of the home cannot hold the large number of awards and gifts he has received over the past few decades from grateful nations and organizations.

Below, four of the numerous books, Jim has authored or co-authored.  

 

His wife, Karen, has experienced an important career herself in paediatrics rehabilitation helping children with developmental and autistic challenges.  This talented couple met in medical school, and have two grown children.  They are about to become grandparents for the first time.

 Below, Karen and Jim Holliman visiting the Glenn and Barbara Hollimans, September 2012.

Jim has seen much pain and injury in his career across the world.  Having been up close to our recent wars in the Middle East, he thought carefully when I asked him what summary statement would he make for our extended Holliman family to ponder. He did not hesitate - "Medicine is the venue to peace".  Truly Karen and Jim know the truth of that statement as both their lives have been dedicated to reducing human suffering.

For more on Jim, visit the web site EPIjournal.com to read some of his articles. He welcomes hearing from cousins, especially those in or who might be considering the medicine as a career.  Jim has been and remains a mentor to many. With permission, his email address is jholliman@cdham.org.

Note: Jim Holliman is also a first cousin of Glenda Norris, a frequent contributer to this blog and the understanding of Holliman family history in Alabama.

As always, an education and inspiration when I visit with Holliman cousins both near and far....more later.

Those Were the Days 

by Dr. Rhodes Holliman

My second cousin, Dr. Rhodes Holliman continues his touching memoir of his childhood in rural Fayette County, Alabama in the 1930s.  Rhodes, along with his father, Cecil Rhodes Holliman, and his niece, Glenda Norris, has done much to preserve Holliman family history. - GNH

"Hunting was my passion.  A great uncle named Eura Carter lived in southern Fayette County near Patton’s Chapel and very close to the Sipsey River.  He had a fox terrier named ‘Beans’ that was the finest squirrel dog that ever put a nose to the ground.  

Beans was a silent tracker.  He did not bark until he had the squirrel treed and then would bark one time.  You had to keep Beans in sight because if you did not hear his solo bark, you could lose him and he would hold a squirrel up a tree for hours.  He was never a house pet.  The only time he ever showed any friendly emotion was when we came out of the house with a shotgun and indicated that we were going hunting.  Then he was bundle of energy leading the way."

Below, young Rhodes Holliman grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, but looked forward to summer days and school holidays in the country side of West Alabama.

"In those days the virgin timber in the Sipsey Bottoms was composed of giant gum, water oak, beech, hickory and other trees that grew 100 plus feet tall and produced a canopy so dense that sunlight could not reach the forest floor except in the dead of winter.  There was very little undergrowth and you could walk through the forest without being encumbered by thickets of briars, brush and saplings.  It was in this pristine wilderness that I first went hunting at age 4 with my Dad, Cecil Rhodes Holliman, Uncle Eura and Beans.

Beans trotted along ahead, nose to the ground and presently he barked, and we saw him.  If you couldn’t see the squirrel, you just got down on your knees and looked up Beans’ nose and there was the quarry!  If the squirrel moved, Beans would move, always keeping his nose pointing dead on target.  Well, Beans was pointing, Dad was loading his shotgun and I was standing under the tree looking straight up.  There was a tremendous ‘BANG’, a thrashing in the tree top, and the squirrel fell directly on my head.  Luckily, the squirrel was DOA (dead on arrival) and did not bite or claw me. 

From that moment on, I was hooked to squirrel hunting and my question arose immediately, ‘when can I have a gun?’ Such a question today would probably instill a sense of horror and fear in a city bred parent but, ‘in the good old days’, a conservative father, reared on a farm, would give this question some serious consideration.  I had to wait until I was 6 years old and learn hunter safety and be strong enough to carry a firearm.  

At 6, I became the happiest child in the Sipsey Swamps with my new .410 single barrel while Dad carried the ammunition.  Beans would find the squirrel, Dad would stand behind me and hand me a shell and another squirrel would ‘bite the dust’.  That gun produced a mighty kick for a 6 year old but the harvest it produced offset the pain and bruises."

Left to right, Cecil Rhodes Holliman, Jim Holliman, Dr. Rhodes Holliman and Elizabeth Baker Holliman (widow of James Monroe Holliman).  Rocking in front is Belzy Anne Blakeney Baker, mother of Elizabeth.  This picture was made ca. 1955.

"In the days of the Great Depression, squirrel meat was a staple source of protein in Fayette County and many other rural areas of the South.  We would par-boil the squirrel first --then fry them up or cook them to make squirrel dumplings.  Yum!  I learned quickly that the hunter is responsible for cleaning his harvest and Uncle Eura was a master teacher of the techniques for skinning squirrel.  Any coon hounds standing around would be happy to eat the raw squirrel hides, hair and all, in one gulp!"

Glenda Norris, a niece of Dr. Rhodes Holliman and daughter of Cecile Eugenia Holliman Youngblood, poses on the porch of her ancestor, Thomas Blakeney's dog trot home in Newtonville, Alabama in 2006.  The home still stands serving as a reminder of life in the 19th Century Deep South.

"There was much sadness when Beans departed this life.  I continued to hunt squirrels with hounds but none of them could ever match the skill of Beans.  After a while I would just go into the woods without a hound and find a good spot near a beech or hickory mast. I would look for a squirrel den in a hollow tree and there I would wait, sitting very still, watching for movement.  

Using this technique at only 14 years of age brought me a bounty of 6 squirrels from one giant red oak den.  I would shoot and the squirrel would hit the ground.  Each time I would mark the spot but not move and wait for the next one to appear. This kind of hunting took a lot of patience and perseverance especially for a young boy. As I grew older, night time coon and possum hunting were added to my list of favorite things to do down by the Sipsey in Fayette County, Alabama."

 Next Posting, more on life in rural Alabama in an earlier generation....