Reed Blakeney, a Remembrance

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Blakeneys, Bakers and Hollimans of Old Alabama....

Reed Blakeney of Social Circle, Georgia died this past July 4, 2019 after almost 91 years of living.  He left us a large legacy of remembrances on the complexity of the Old South.  Both Reed and I are Alabama born, although he is a generation ahead of me.  I got to know Reed through my closer cousin, Rhodes B. Holliman.

Reed and the late Rhodes Holliman (1928-2014) were close and shared numerous trips to Fayette County, Alabama cemeteries looking for graves of Blakeney, Baker, Holliman, and other kinfolks.

Rhodes was a biologist, a professor at Virginia.  Reed, a retired businessman, but had a wonderful way with the English language.

Picture is of Reed Blakeney and Glenn Holliman, 2013

If you look back to my August 4 and 18th, 2013 blogs, you will read of my visit with Reed, a gentleman of the New South, born in the segregationist age and leader into the increased human diversity age of the 21st Century.  I love his book Sipsey, named after the river that runs through Fayette County and borders the original Blakeney and Holliman farms of the first half of the 19th Century.

Living adjacent to each other and travelers from the same part of the Carolinas, the two families mixed and mingled and that's how, by marriage, I am related to Reed.

To find the Reed Blakeney articles or any other in this blog, look to the bottom left column of this page, and in alphabetical order of first names (not surnames), go down the list.  Or go to www.bholliman.com, click to the Records page and type in Blakeney in the search box.  Up  will come a myriad of Blakeney manuscripts and research.

Below, 1958, five generations. Sitting is Belzy Ann Blakeney, and left, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Baker Holliman, Cecil R. Holliman, his daughter, Cecile Holliman Youngblood, and grand daughter, Cecile Youngblood Brown.  Cecil R. Holliman is the father of  Rhodes B. Holliman and the grandfather of Dr. Jim Holliman.

To bring this story together, Dr. Jim Holliman presented me on July 20, 2019 with a cane he had inherited through his father (Rhodes) from his great grandmother, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Baker Holliman (1879-1975), wife of James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), one of my great uncles.

The inscription reads  "This walking stick was owned and used by Anna Elizabeth Baker, wife of James Monroe Holliman, Birmingham, Alabama. She died September 1975."

Left, Jim Holliman, M.D., shows me the inscription while his wife, Karen, looks on.  Physician Jim advises me that with my chronic back problem, I am soon be using the cane!

Examine Blakeney, Baker and Holliman  relationships and one has many stories of Fayette and Jefferson County, Alabama families.  

Let's close with a picture of Reed and his second wife, Donna in 2013. 




Reed has left us stories and poems and we are richer for his work. - GNH

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!