The Annual Meeting with Jeanette Holiman Stewart

Our Annual Review
by Glenn N. Holliman

Jeanette Holiman Stewart is the keeper of the amazing Hollyman Ancestry.com tree.  For the last four winters she and I (photograph on the right) have gathered in her Florida home and reviewed our activities the previous year.

Check her Hollyman Ancestry Tree and you will discover the work that she and other genealogists in the family have accomplished.   Here are the numbers for what are now many years of achievement.


People - 54,931
Photos - 25,808
Stories - 2009
Records - 250,332    

If there be anything you wish to know about the family in the USA, contact her through the Ancestry site.  You do not need to be a member to review the Tree and can send her a message concerning an ancestor.  Odds are she will have information for you.

The Passing of Robert Hollyman-Mawson
(1948-2019)

Our time together this year was joyous and sad.  Sad because we lost a talented Hollyman genealogist, Robert Hollyman-Mawson of Bangor, Wales.  Bob died last fall after years of ill health.  Many of you had exchanged emails with him in the past decade.

Left, Bob in 1965 as a young sailor in the British Royal Navy.  He was very proud of his service.

In January, I flew over to Wales and with the kind permission and encouragement of his surviving daughter who lives in Canada, took possession of his worldly goods.  There were boxes of personal items now saved and to be delivered to his daughter when I return from England in June 2020 on the Queen Mary.  There are also seven boxes of genealogical materials saved for scanning and sharing on the www.bholliman.com virtual archives.  

It will be summer (coronavirus permitting) before I can return with the materials and begin posting them for Hollyman genealogists to utilize.  We all are grateful to his daughter for making this possible.

America and Australia Connect

A much more joyous event was receiving an email last month from Michael Hollyman of Australia.  Mike and I now have been trading emails and information back and forth for several weeks.  Working closely with Mike, I hope to begin sharing information on the Hollyman families of New Zealand and Australia via this blog.

Most intriguing is evidence Mike shared of DNA evidence that the Hollymans of Somerset, England and Wales indeed are related to the Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire Hollymans from which most American Hollimans (various spellings) descend.  Over the years, Bob Hollyman Mawson and I had fretted about closing this gap between these two branches.  

A significant portion of Mike's information was collected and published by his late father, K. J. (Jim)  Hollyman of New Zealand and his Welsh genealogical partner,  Dennis Hollyman.   More on all this in later writings!

Genealogy is the recording of transitions.  It is a sorrow to lose Bob, and we salute his work in serving our family history.  We thank his daughter for allowing us to do so. - GNH

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