The Library is Open

by Glenn N. Holliman

Does one call it a virtual archive, a library with a card catalog or your uncle's attic?  Whatever the name, one will find at www.bholliman.com  a growing assembly of manuscripts, biographies, family histories, family and government records, email collections, letters and even some photographs.

My research and writing has diminished at this site as I have been struggling to learn how to upload and save various documents. I am not of a generation for whom technology comes easy.  My tech savvy ended in the 1950s turning focus knobs on the family's 17 inch Motorola black and white television.

So for a while, I am an archivist.  Almost 500 documents now available to the extended families, most relating to Hollimans, Hollymans, Holleman or however your ancestors spelled our surname.

Let me recognize a few who are now storing documents.  First there is Joseph Parker of Texas.  At our gathering in Smithfield, Virginia in early April, he bestowed on me a large 4 inch notebook binder full of notes and information he has collected and stored through the decades.

 Right, Joe Parker and Lynn Holliman, good friends and relatives who wrestle together with lineages, share a laugh.

I have scanned his pages on Holleman marriages and his numerous notes.  Go to the web site, click on Records.  Go to the Surname Search section and type in Joseph Parker.  

His documents, now saved for the future, will come up.  Click on a document of your choice and allow some time for it to upload, and there you have Joe's research.

The same can be said for his distant cousin and good friend, Lynn Holliman, also of Texas.  Lynn has specialized in David Holliman and his families in Georgia and James Grantson Holliman of North Carolina.  The manuscript Lynn distributed at the April Hollyman Gathering on his research is available at the archive.  Follow the same procedure as detailed above, and you will have a number of items with Lynn listed as the author.

Since our Gathering, another ace researcher, Bob Hollyman-Mawson, an Englishman who lives in Wales, has passed along a cascade of Hollyman lists (various spellings) from the many shires in England where American Hollimans have distant cousins, descendants of those who did not immigrate as did Christopher Hollyman in 1650 from Bedfordshire.  

Again type in Bob's name in the Surname Search section of the Records page, and an amazing catalog of names and locations will appear. If you are an English Holliman descendant you definitely will want to review Bob's massive collection of names, dates and towns.

Above, Bob as a sailor in Her Majesty's Royal Navy in 1963. Right, a recent Remembrance Day, 11 November, with Bob sporting his medals and a red poppy, and looking every bit the quintessential Englishman!  

Bob is no stranger to many of you.  He has emailed with many Hollimans in the USA and has contributed numerous articles in this space.  Bob has been the conduit from which American Hollimans have learned much about our English heritage.

As with Joe and Lynn, we owe Bob a debt of gratitude for sharing his research and manuscripts.

There are more contributors, both living and passed, whose work I have and will continue to upload.  The children of Walter O. Holliman and Rhodes B. Holliman have left me boxes and boxes of papers.  All I am carefully reading, scanning and if the Creator gives me enough time, will add to the www.bholliman.com archive.

When my DNA is rotated, my son and nephew will take over stewardship of this archive.  So if you have something to share with the generations to come, let me know.

More later at this blog spot, as I find time to write between scanning and archiving.  Thanks for reading and your many emails. - GNH

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