The Passing of Rhodes Holliman, Ph.D.

by Glenn N. Holliman

We lost one of our best family historians this morning - Dr. Rhodes Burns Holliman (1928-2014) of Dublin, Virginia.  For decades, Rhodes taught biological sciences at Virginia Tech., himself a Ph.D. in infectious diseases from Florida State University.  April 29, 2014, after months of ill health, he slipped away with his loving wife, Phyllis Anne Holliman, by his side.

Since retirement, Rhodes had indulged in his love of family history, building on the voluminous research of his father, Cecil Rhodes Holliman (1902-1986).  Much of what many of us know of the Alabama and Carolina Hollimans comes from the work of this marvelous father and son duo of family historians.

Rhodes was my second cousin.  His father, Cecil, was my father's (H. Bishop Holliman, 1919) first cousin. All of us were born in Alabama.  In March 2012 in this spot, I published Rhodes' memories of summers and weekends in his beloved Fayette County, Alabama.  These articles on rustic life in the 1930s have attracted more readers than almost anything that has been published in this space in the past four years since inception.

 A number of you reading this column know Glenda Norris, a niece of Rhodes, the daughter of Cecile E. Holliman Youngblood (1937-2012), late of Alabaster, Alabama. Below with her hand on her Uncle Rhodes is Glenda,who has helped conduct the 2011 and 2013 Holliman Family Forums in Fayette, Alabama. Rhodes, her uncle sits at the table in Birmingham, Alabama with another niece, Susan Youngblood Corley, behind him.  His sister, Cecile is also at the table in this 2007 picture.  

Glenda, an avid student of Holliman and her associated families such as the Bakers, Burns and Blakeneys, remembers her grandfather, Cecil, pecking away in the 1960s on his manual typewriter, laboriously recording family stories.

The work of Rhodes and his father, their manuscripts, files and photographs, he generously shared with me.  I have scanned and uploaded the bulk of this vast family material to the Hollyman/Holyman MyFamily.com site.  


The genealogy work of Rhodes and Cecil is not in vain nor stored forever in some attic, forgotten by future generations.  It is available for researchers as long as the web exists.   

That is what Rhodes asked me to do, and that is what I have done. I have done the same with the Walt O. Holliman manuscripts entrusted to me by his children.  And some day, I hope someone will do the same for me with my family histories and research.   Family, pass it along....

Below, the writer with his cousin, Rhodes, April 2013 in Dublin, Virginia.

Rhodes his survived by his wife of many years, Phyllis Anne Holliman, a son and good friends of mine, Jim Holliman, M.D. and his wife, Karen, of Hershey, Pennsylvania.  There are four grown grandchildren, one great grandson and three nieces.  Rhodes was predeceased in death in 2008 by another son, Daniel Rhodes Holliman, M.D.  Two other lovely people in Rhodes' life are brother-in-law Dennis  Jackson and Clare Fugate, the mother of two of his grand children.

 Have questions about Holliman family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at Hollyman-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the Hollyman Family Facebook Page located on Facebook at "Hollyman Family". Post your questions and perhaps one of the dozens Holyman cousins on the list will have an answer. For more information contact Tina Peddie at desabla1@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

Join your many cousins at MyFamily.com and view an expanded Holliman family tree and many files on the history of the family.  Just write to glennhistory@gmail.com for an invitation. Or go to the HOLLYMAN GENEALOGY MyFamily site at http://myfamily.com/group/hollyman. Then click on "Request to Join" in upper righthand corner!

From the Galaxy of Holliman Cousins and Great Uncles and Aunts, 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

This continues the series on Dr. Rhodes B. Holliman and his ancestors and associated families....I am grateful to him for access to his historic photographs of Fayette, Alabama and family.

Below James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), third son of Civil War veteran, John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930).  The photograph below is dated 1896, when James was 18, three years away from marriage to Anne Elizabeth Baker.  They would have two boys who lived to maturity - Cecil Rhodes Holliman and Charles Baker Holliman. 

The year before James married Anne Elizabeth Baker, the Baker family which lived in Newtonville, Alabama posed for this photograph which caught the a southern family in 1898 wearing their Sunday best.  Note James Mutius Baker on the far right in wing tip collar and hat.

 

Back row, left to right: Frances Hillman Baker, George Washington Baker, Anne Elizabeth Baker, Belzy Ann Blakeney Baker, Georgia Bell Baker (babe in arms).  Front row,  left to right: Guyton Baker, Pearl Baker, Frederick Coleman Baker, Montie Lea Baker, Allie Mac Baker, James Mutius Baker.


Below, the Fayette County, Alabama courthouse in 1898.  It was destroyed in the town fire of 1911.

 

Fayette in 1898 was still captured by the cotton culture of the old South as this picture taken in front of the Court House suggests.  Family farmers all over the nation suffered in the 1890s giving rise to the Populist movement which flowered briefly and then faded in Alabama. 

 

Two of James's brothers would work as farmers all their lives. Not James. He first practised law in Fayette, Alabama serving as county solicitor in the 1910s. A horrible fire swept through Fayette in 1911 destroying much of the downtown.

The fire, the inability to advance in a political career running as a Republican in the solid Democratic South and the lure of the Magic City of Birmingham, must have moved James to make an important move around age 40. As with millions of other Americans, north or south, James Monroe Holliman would head to the big city. 

In the future more on James Monroe Holliman and his brother,  however, next post, back to England and our European roots....

From the Galaxy of Holliman Cousins and Great Uncles and Aunts

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Biology Professor who became the Alabama Holliman Family Expert....

No one living knows as much about the Cornelius Holliman (1792-1862) family that migrated from South Carolina to Alabama in 1836 than Dr. Rhodes Burns Holliman of Virginia.  When I started writing this blog 2 1/2 years ago, the first articles on John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930), Martha Jane Walker Holliman (1846-1931) and James Franklin Holliman (1839-1911) were by Rhodes.

Earlier this year I posted a three part series by Rhodes on his summers in Fayette County, Alabama in the 1930s and how different life was then than now in the country.  According to my blog counter, this is one of the most read series that has been posted in this space.

Below, Rhodes at his desk, composing articles and saving photographs of 19th Century family members such as the Hollimans, Blakeneys and Bakers of central Alabama.

 

 

Last posting in this space, I wrote of Rhodes' dedicated physician son, Jim Holliman.  Jim, as does Rhodes, follows in a line of talented ancestors.  Jim's grandfather was Cecil Rhodes Holliman (1902-1986), a distinguished Birmingham, Alabama attorney, who eagerly collected family stories and wrote a major manuscript on the Samuel T. Walker (1821-1900) families. One of Cecil's grandfathers was Samuel Taylor Walker, a Confederate Civil War veteran.

 

Below Cecil Rhodes Holliman as a 1921 cadet at the Marion Military Institute, Marion, Alabama.  Dr. Rhodes Holliman, a specialist in exotic diseases and retired professor from Virginia Tech, acquired his love of family history from his father, Cecil.  This photograph and the one below are from the Rhodes Holliman collection.

 

Cecil's father was the dynamic pioneer of this branch, James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), who married a Fayette County girl, Elizabeth Ann Baker in 1899.  James studied law, served as county solicitor, and later moved to Birmingham to set up a law practice that continues to this day under his great and great, great nephews, Jim and John Holliman, attorneys at law.

Below, James Monroe Holliman in a 1924 photograph, who left the farm run by his father, John Thomas Holliman, and by his wits and enterprise became a successful Alabama attorney.  He sired a distinguished prodigy of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Next post, more on my cousins, great aunts and uncles from this distinguished and successful branch of the Holliman family....

The Parents of James Grantson Holliman, Part I

by Glenn N. Holliman

Who are the Parents and Grandparents of James Grantson Holliman (1750 - 1836)?

Several months ago, I posted articles on Hollimans who settled in West Alabama in the 1830s and their descendants who live there to this day.  The Alabama Hollimans (and others) descend from James Grantson Holliman, my generation's 4th great grand father who was born in Johnston County, North Carolina in 1750 and died in Lancaster County, South Carolina in 1836.  Some of his children, one being Cornelius Holliman, my 3rd great grandfather, moved to Alabama the year their father died.

The Hollimans (various spellings) began to leave southern Virginia, generally Isle of Wight and Surrey Counties, in the decades after the Tuscarora tribe was displaced from North Carolina in the 1710s and 1720s.  As with thousands of others, they began to settle south of the Virginia border in the tidewater, sand hill and piedmont sections of eastern North Carolina.  The spelling of Holliman varied from generation to generation and from county clerk to county clerk.  Hence, one find Hollomans, Hollemans and other variations after the 'y' in Holyman gave way to other vowels.

As with almost all genealogies there are 'missing gaps' or uncertainties of the names of ancestors.  What follows hopefully a mystery solved concerning my generation's 5th great grandparents.


The names of the parents and grandparents of James Grantson Holliman have been a puzzle to many.  A popular Holliman family lineage web site states that Christopher Holliman Sr. (d 1691) begat Christopher Holliman, Jr. (true enough) who begat John Holliman (true) who begat Jesse Holliman (true) who was the father of James Grantson Holliman (not supported by evidence).  

Several years ago over dinner in Virginia with my cousin Dr. Rhodes Holliman (who along with his late father Cecil Rhodes) is an accomplished Holliman historian, observed that the family lineage between Christopher Sr. and James Grantson was 'soft' and had some holes in it.  Coming from a person highly immersed in Holliman history, and who has continued to build on his father's extensive research, well, this got my attention.  Dr. Rhodes Holliman, below, has been stalwart in keeping the flame of the history of Alabama Hollimans burning brightly.

Then I heard from Maxine Wright, persistent and careful Holliman researcher from Arkansas and another descendant of James Grantson Holliman, who discovered a host of reasons that challenge this ‘conventional’ line.Then I noticed on the Tina Peddie chat room other cousins, Joe Parker and Jeanette Holiman, who are always very well researched, also challenged the above lineage. Ron Holliman from Alabama raised my doubts also with information on Samuel Holliman's historic home near Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Take a minute below to review the 'traditional' lineage that is posted widely on the Internet and many Ancestry.com sites. The web site done a number of years ago represents a mountain of work by a distant cousin for which we all should be grateful.  However, as with any historical research and interpretation (especially mine), we need to keep probing and critiquing. Genealogy is a process.

The Web Lineage that is challenged but still on the web and Ancestry sites - 


Christopher Holyman, Sr. (1618 - 1691) (DNA testing proves this Christopher is my ancestor)
to
Christopher Holliman, Jr. (1660 ca - 1733)
to
John Holliman (d 1751), wife - Elizabeth
to 
Jesse Holliman, (d 1812), wife Charity Coffer in 1753
to 
James Grantson Holliman (1750 - 1836), my 4th Great Grandfather 

Now in the next posting, Jeanette Holiman Stewart will prove a negative and demonstrate the above lineage is not POSSIBLE.

Those Were the Days!  

by Dr. Rhodes B. Holliman, Dublin, Virginia

Rhodes Holliman, who has had a distinguished college career in teaching and biological research, recorded in 2007 his boyhood memories of Fayette County, Alabama and some memories of his Holliman, Blakeney and Baker relatives. He captures nostalgically an earlier time in a rural America in the 1930s then largely still untouched by 20th Century domestic conveniences.– GNH, his second cousin

"As a boy, I lived for the opportunity to leave my home in Birmingham, Alabama to travel to Fayette County, Alabama in the Newtonville area, approximately thirty miles north of Tuscaloosa. I would stay with great aunts and uncles. I would hunt, fish and get back to the frontier environment away from the clamor of city life.

 My pleading to my father, Cecil Rhodes Holliman, who was an attorney in Birmingham, was perpetual, and seasoned, ‘Let’s go see Uncle Eura, Aunt Mae, Uncle Mute, Aunt Ila, Uncle Virgil and Aunt Pearl’, knowing full well that the roads might be impassable in wet weather and the old 1929 Ford A-Model sedan might break down." 

Above Dr. Rhodes Holliman, center top, poses with his family in the 1930s.  Rhode's father, Cecil Rhodes Holliman is left; center is his sister,  Cecile Eugenia Holliman Youngblood and his mother,  Ruby Burns Holliman, right. Like his father, Cecil, Rhodes has invested countless hours in researching his family history.  

"This was a time, the 1930s, when the crossroads at Newtonville seemed almost as primitive as when the Native Americans moved out and my ancestors migrated in from South Carolina in the 1830s.  There was no pavement south of Fayette, which was known as the rail road town. There was no electricity, only crank phones, no municipal water and no sewage treatment.  Instead of having six rooms and a bath, most of the homes were dog trots, ‘4 rooms and a path!’"

The above map of Fayette County, Alabama is from the Walt O. Holliman Resource Collection for Holliman and Associated Families.  Walt (1927 - 2003) marked in yellow numerous Holliman family cemeteries.  Newtonville is in the lower right corner near Shepherd's Church. The county seat of Fayette is further north. Walt Holliman's notes and use of a yellow marker are visible on the map. Many of the Bakers are buried at Shepherd Cemetery.- GNH


Glenda Norris, a niece of Dr. Rhodes Holliman, has helped identify the aunts and uncles mentioned above.  They are:


Eura Carter (1878 - Nov 4, 1956) 
Allie Mae Baker Carter, (b. 1888)
J. Mutius Baker (Aug 23, 1885 - Apr 28, 1965), husband of Ila Yerby Baker 
Ila Lula Yerby Baker (July 9, 1891 - Apr 22, 1975), wife of J. Mutius Baker 
Virgil Benton Gibson 
Pearl Baker Gibson


The parents of the above Baker children, all of whom were born in Newtonville, Alabama, are George W. (March 13, 1851 - November 21, 1928) and Belzy Ann Blakeney Baker (September 1859 - March 16, 1960). 


Additional Baker children are Anna Elizabeth, who married James Monroe Holliman (the grandparents of the writer, Rhodes Holliman, of this article);  Francis Hillman, who married Elsie Dunscomb; Ruth Guyton, who was married first to B. T. Lovette and then to F.N. Henderson; Pearl, who married Virgil Benton Gibson; Montie Lea, who married Lynn Davis Boshell; Frederick Coleman, who married first to Fleta Williams and second to a lady from Ohio whose first name was Bernadetta; Georgia Bell, who married Earl Ray; Nora Louise, who died at the age of six years and two infants who died shortly after birth.  Several of the mates of George and Belzy Baker's children were also descendants of Newtonville, Alabama pioneers such as the Yerbys, Gibsons, Rays and Hollimans.




Next, more on the 1930s in rural West Alabama....