Preserving our Past for the Future 2019

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our Annual Review of the Fascinating work of Jeanette Holiman Stewart!

Here we are again as we  have for several winters, Jeanette on the right and I on the left, comparing notes at the home of Jeanette and Jim Stewart in Florida.

Jeanette is the chief administrator of the Hollyman Ancestry.com site, now with over 50,000 names, up from 44,000 last year.  The number of records has passed 225,000!

This is a prodigious piece of work that she and others have accomplished over the years.  Jeanette receives questions almost daily from distant cousins from all over the world.

In the photograph above, we were working on two particular issues involving our common ancestor Richard Hollyman, d 1711, one of the four sons of Christopher Hollyman (1618-1691) of Bedfordshire, England and Isle of Wight, Virginia.  Richard married a widow, Margaret Jordan House, probably in 1700.  In 1707,  our 5th great grandfather, Samuel was born and later moved from Surry County, Virginia to North Carolina.  In the centuries to come, our American families continued moving west.  Jeanette was born in Texas and I to an Alabama family.

An Intrusive Court Case in Colonial Virginia

What is fascinating is that Richard and Margaret started their family before benefit of a legal marriage.  She was called before a parish court in Surry and found guilty of 'fornication' and named our Richard as the father of her child, name of which we are not sure.  Widow Margaret was fined the ghastly sum of 500 pounds of Virginia tobacco for her premature intimacies with Richard.  Margaret did have a child from her first marriage, Mary, who was at least temporarily taken away from her, evidently our multiple great grandmother perceived as an unfit mother.  This was indeed a different era in a seemingly tightly regulated colonial American society.

Master Hollyman genealogist Joseph Parker sent me details of the above incident several years ago.  One can find his research at www.bholliman.com, a virtual archives.  Go to the Records page and enter Margaret's name (try also Richard Hollyman or Joseph Parker), drill down a bit and click on the manuscript which also contains other items of interest of Colonial era Hollimans.

A Complicated Task

Jeanette and I have begun the task of tracing Margaret Jordan's Virginia ancestors which is proving complicated.  Evidently there were several Jordan families in the new colony prior to 1650, one of the most famous persons being Samuel Silas Jordan (1578 ca -1623).  Samuel Jordan served in the first House of Burgess in Jamestown in 1619, the first assembly of representative democracy in what became the USA.  Is Samuel a great grandfather of descendants of Richard Hollyman?  As yet, we do not know.  More research is required, so Jeanette is directing me to spend more time at the Library of Virginia, the next time I visit grandchildren in Richmond.

What was that other issue Jeanette and I were studying?  Check out the next blog to learn more about the founding family for most Hollimans (various spellings) in the present USA!