When We Were English, Part XXXV

A Cuddington, Buckinghamshire Connection?  Maybe So
by Glenn N. Holliman

8.    In the 1580s, Robert Holyman of Cuddington had real estate dealings with Thomas Tyringham, whose home was in the near village of Nether Winchendon, Buckinghamshire, and may have had family in Tyringham near Sherington.  (See article posted July 28, 2010) Could a Robert Holyman relative be our Christopher Hollyman of 1589 in Sherington?  Could this be the tie to the Cuddington Holymans, approximately 30 miles south of Sherington?

The pub at Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, only a few blocks from the former Holyman farm, sports a thatched roof, a not uncommon architectural feature in English villages.

A scenario can be constructed that Christopher Holyman, Sr. who died Isle of Wight, Virginia in 1691, was the son of Thomas Hollyman, probably born in Sherington, Buckinghamshire who by 1609 was earning a living in Bedford, Bedfordshire and married that year at St. Peter’s parish.

And this Thomas, a second son who inherited some assets, but not family property, from Christopher Holyman (will of 1589) of Sherington, is the same Thomas Hollyman who went to grammar school in Lathbury, Buckinghamshire in 1595.

And while more research is needed, this 1589 Christopher Hollyman of Sherington may have moved to the area from the central part of Buckinghamshire, the Cuddington, Tring or Cholesbury area, perhaps being born sometime from 1520 to 1550.  Perhaps!

Thatched roofs in Sherington, Buckinghamshire.  Did Holymans centuries past sleep and live under threshes?

Now who then is the Christopher 1589’s father?!!!  Are we on the edge of taking the family tree another one hundred years or so back in time, to the time when The Rt. Rev. John Holyman, Counter-Reformation Bishop, was born in 1495 in Cuddington, Buckinghamshire?  (See blog article of September 2010.)

Notwithstanding the significant number of Holliman families in Worcestershire, is this Christopher Hollyman of Sherington, Buckinghamshire the grandfather of the Christopher Holyman who sailed to Virginia in 1650?  Have we found my generation’s 9^th great grandfather?

And indeed, are we a few more bits of research from tying the Cuddington/Tring Holymans to the Sherington and Bedford Holymans?  Are we pushing the family history back to the 1400s!