The Explorations of a Holloman Genealogist, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Lynn Holloman Fusinato of Richardson, Texas passed away in January 2018. Trained as a scientist, she was meticulous and accurate in researching and recording her family history.  In her life's journey and her avocation of genealogy, she was accompanied by her husband, Bob, who now shares with us some of her research.  What follows is a trip Lynn and Bob took in the early spring of 2017, searching for family roots in Missouri.

In the following blog, one will find information on Hollomans, Holmes, Blackwell, Bollinger and Whites.  Our thanks to Bob for recording and sharing this story with our readers.  Later I shall be adding these articles to the family archives at www.bholliman.com.  More of Lynn's work and life can be found in our February 3, 2018 article. - GNH

Lynn Holloman Fusinato's 2017 Genealogical Trip to Missouri
by Bob Fusinato

Wednesday 03-22 to Sunday 03-26, 2017 (Farmington, Missouri and Environs)

We spent Wednesday driving the 600+ miles from our home in the Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas area to Farmington, Missouri. There we were to stay at the Crown Pointe lodge for 4 nights.

Courthouses, Cemeteries and Libraries
These are places genealogists visit to establish facts about family histories. On this trip we did our share of visiting each of them.

Our first stop on Thursday was the Sainte Genevieve courthouse recorder's office where deeds and other records are kept. Lynn's Holloman ancestors and related families settled in an area of Sainte Genevieve county known as the New Tennessee settlement.

We spent almost the whole day at the Court House in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri looking up land records in order to clear up some fuzzy areas in Lynn's earlier research. On return, we stopped at the Sainte Genevieve library where Lynn attempted to clear up a few loose ends. Then, with a few hours of daylight left, we took the scenic route back through Coffman, Missouri where Lynn's ancestors had settled back in the early 1800s.

Lynn traces her Missouri lineage back to her great, great grandfather, Allan W. Holloman whose parents moved from North Carolina to the Cape Girardeau area back in 1810 or 1811 when Allan was about 5 or 6 years old. They did not remain in the Cape Gerardeau area very long however. After the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812, they moved up to Sainte Genevieve county to an area known as the New Tennessee Settlement where they established homesteads along a branch of the Saline River. 

Google Maps 2017 Coffman, MO and environs

This area has been bought up by the Crown Properties Company which has established vineyards and a winery on the site. As a result the land remains largely pristine but inaccessible. We have in the past taken the winery "tour" where we sampled some wines and sat on the hilltop patio overlooking Lynn's ancestral lands. On this trip, the winery was still closed for the winter.

The large part of the story of the westward expansion of the US is written in the land patents, deeds, and other documents to be found at the various county recorders offices in the region. The folks who settled in the New Tennessee settlement must have had a lot in common.  A neighboring patch of land belonged to William Holmes and his wife Mary Blackwell. The Holloman family became forever intertwined with the Holmes' when Alan married their daughter Lucinda Holmes.

Prior to settling in the New Tennessee settlement area, William Holmes farmed a plot of land he had obtained as a Spanish land grant. It was located to the southwest of the New Tennessee settlement along the Little Saint Francis River where the river is crossed by present day highway which runs between Farmington and Fredericktown. We passed over that stream on Friday (3/24) and Lynn just had to stop to take a few pictures.

The Bollinger Connection

Allan W Holloman's son, Thomas Edward Holloman (Lynn's great grandfather) married a girl from a bit further south in Madison county. There is quite a story involving a horse about how Precia Matilda Bollinger became Lynn's great grandmother, but I'm not going into it here. Suffice it to say that she is Lynn's connection to Joseph Bollinger and the Whites who lived along the Castor river. (Elizabeth White Bollinger was Precia Matilda's mother.)

Next, we headed to Caster Hill/Caster Station on Highway 72 to visit the cemetery on the original homestead of John White, Lynn's ggg-grandfather, where John and his wife Preshy are buried.

We then continued on to Patton, Missouri to visit a Methodist cemetery on the original homestead of Missouri pioneer John Bollinger where he and his wife are buried. John was Joseph Bollinger's grandfather which makes the couple buried here Lynn's gggg-grandparents.

John Bollinger was a Lutheran, not a Methodist, but the Lutheran ministers disappeared from the area around 1830-1840 and the local Lutherans joined other Christian faiths in the area which probably explains the Methodist church on the property. We took a few pictures, but the stones are getting harder to identify.

The best picture and write up is in a book called The Bollinger Connection first published in the early 1980's.

We headed back west on Highway 72 to research land records at the court houses in Fredericktown and Ironton. We were able to find a good copy of The Bollinger Connection in the Fredericktown library and Bob made a scan of it.

On our way back to Farmington, we stopped to check on the graves of Lynn's Holloman gg-grandparents in the Masonic cemetery in Arcadia .

Oh, and since Friday was Bob's birthday, we went back to the Colton's Steakhouse in Farmington for supper and to celebrate by overdosing on their sin-sational chocolate fudge brownie sundae.

Next Posting, more on Lynn and Bob's genealogical tour of Missouri.....