When We Were English, Part XXI

by Glenn N. Holliman

Weddings and Witches


In the Hertfordshire Archives is a book entitled Hertfordshire Parish Registers by Phillomore's, 1907, 3 volumes. Of course out of print and I had precious few hours to review it. It is on my list to revisit some day. However, I did find several weddings of Holyman females to local males. For the record, they are listed below.

By the way, the first two marriages were from yet another village, just a few miles also from Tring - Berkhamstead. Below is a view of it's High Street in 2010.

The Berkhamstead Marriages:

Franncys Hadden to Margery Hollyman on 6 May 1601.

Henry Lawrence to Jane Hollyman (Holeman) on 7 February 1638.

Here are two Tring marriages in the same publication:

William Hollyman to Grace Neelie on 20 July 1607 (This is the son of William of Tring whose will we reviewed in When We Were English, Part XIX).

Goff Babylong to Anna Holliman on 7 May 1634

So above some more information for the Holyman history trail in England. Cousin Maxine Wright has ordered Tring Parish microfilm and hopefully may find yet our hidden John Holyman who died in Virginia in 1650. My on-site research has failed to turn him up, but I did find a host of very interesting Holymans who impacted English and American religious history. Hopefully when I return to England next spring I can collect some DNA samples from possible ancestors and search again in local archives.

Some times it is not what one finds in genealogical research, it is also what one does not find. And sometimes, one may feel bewitched and frustrated not to collect more information. That leads me to my closing historical tidbit you may enjoy.

While reading in the Tring library the 1940 work by Arthur MacDonald, That Tring Air, I found that the year 1596 must have been very stressful to our ancestors. Our John Holyman would have been 24 years old at the time, and perhaps observed the following out break of, well, witchcraft in his own community!!

Above a 16th century drawing of three English witches. Rather ugly creatures. Note the black cat.

That year in Tring, one Alice Crutch 'bewitched one Hugh Walden who languished and died'. Nor did the episode of nefarious deeds end there. Another woman, named Elizabeth, put a curse on Thomas Grace's valuable horse and it died!!

For their witchery, these two ladies were 'suspended by neck until dead'.

So this Hallowed Eve, think on all the quaint customs of England and Europe that passed through our families to our New World, which we celebrate to this day!

When We Were English, Part XVII

by Glenn N. Holliman

Continuing the Search for John Holyman (1572 - 1650)

Tring, Hertfordshire traces it roots to Anglo-Saxon times, and was located just west of the Danelaw in the 900s. The hamlet is listed in William of Normandy's Doomsday Book. The above is the town logo. (Photo by Barbara Holliman)

I am still looking for that elusive John Holyman who, according to one prominent Holliman genealogical website and the LDS records, was born in Tring, Hertfordshire in 1572. John is the widely reported father of Christopher Holliman, Sr., who is our ancestor of solid record.

We do know a John Holyman did die in Southampton, Virginia in 1650 and left a will which devolved property to a friend, not family. For the past few months, I have been posting information found during an excursion to England seeking Holyman roots and our reported very great grandfather. I continue.

As readers of this web log know, there was a Bishop John Holyman (1495-1558) and an Ezekiel Holyman (1586 - 1659), both religious leaders. One was Roman Catholic and the other a Baptist Protestant. The evidence supports that they are related.

Cousin Jennette Stewart shared by email information that in the English Origins of New England Families, Vol. III, pages 193 - 195, one will find an article by G. Andrews Moriarty entitled 'The Holymans'. In this article Moriarty quotes The Register, an English genealogical publication, that the Holymans were a family of 'substantial yeomen' with branches in Cuddington, Cholesbury and Chesham. The Rt. Rev. John Holyman, Bishop of Bristol from 1554 to 1558 was a member of this family as was one Jayne Holyman (1552 - 1632) and her nephew, Ezekiel Holyman.

From the Latter Day Saints genealogical website, we have the following:

One Leonard Holyman (1520 - 1573) was born in Cholesbury and died in Tring. From the above source we know that Leonard is related to the Cuddington Holymans. I refer all to my post of August 23, 2010, 'When We Were England, Part XV'. Leonard is a contemporary of Bishop John Holyman. Were they brothers or cousins? Cuddington, as the earlier map notes, is an hour or two by horse from Tring and Cholesbury.

Leonard married a Joan (b 1525) also of Cholesbury. They had at least seven children. One was the Jane (Jayne), referred to above, b 1552 in Tring, Cholesbury, died 1636 and is buried in Chesham (near Cholesbury). She married Richard Weedon, as noted in the last posting. One of their sons, James, immigrated to Rhode Island, as did Jayne's nephew, Ezekiel.

Jayne's brother John Holyman (1548 - 1597) was a weaver and had a wife named Ales (Alice). There were a number of children of this marriage, one being Ezekiel Holyman, who would immigrate to New England and help found the Baptist Church in America. Another child, Elsabeth, married into the Weedon family herself.

Two of Leonard's sons, Edward and William, left wills of which I found and made copies while in the Hertfordshire Archives. I will be publishing these wills later and transcribing what I can. There was a third son, John, whose will is below and lifted from the English Origins of New England Families.

The Will of John Holyman (1548 - 1597)

Now John Holyman (d 1597) left a will (abstract above) which does not list a son named John Holyman (remembering we are looking for a John Holyman, b. 1572 in Tring). John (d 1597) does list a godchild, whom he terms John Child. To this godchild, Holyman left his 'looms and all that belongs to them'. His own children received much less, Ezekiel only getting a ewe. Why did he favor the godchild over his natural children? Perhaps John Child had an aptitude for weaving while the others did not? But this John also left John Child his land after his wife's death.

Why favor John Child over one's own children?

Could John Child have taken the last name Holyman from his godfather, John Holyman? Could this John Child be the elusive John Holyman (d 1650 in Virginia)? The dates work. Could this godchild be a natural offspring of John Holyman (d 1597), given perhaps a last name (Child) to obscure a birth out of wedlock? This is only speculation on my part, but the bequests are odd.

So John Holyman (d 1650) is still hidden in history as far as primary sources are concerned, if he be from the Tring area. As cousins Maxine Wright and Joe Parker have revealed, there is evidence John Holyman (d 1650) may have been from twenty-five to thirty miles north in Bedford. If so, why are so many web sites placing him in Tring?

So are the Bedford and Tring area relatives very closely related, perhaps a branch just recently relocated to Bedford from Tring in the late 1500s? Perhaps, somewhere, someplace, some Holyman stated to an authority, "Yes, my family is originally from Tring, before recently moving to Bedford."

I will look further. Thank you for your patience as I attempt to place all this research by several persons and sources in narrative format and on the record. As ever, I am grateful to my distant cousins for their sharing of knowledge and evidence. Opinions expressed and conclusions drawn, as well as errors, are mine alone.

Next posting....looking at the will of William Holyman, a son of John Holyman (d 1597).

When We Were English, Part XVI

by Glenn N. Holliman

Connecting Cuddington Holymans to Cholesbury Holymans and Tring Holymans

Note: Cousin Jeanette Stewart recently shared in a Holliman chat room information on the Holyman and Weedon (Wedon) families of Hertfordshire, England from the English Origins of New England Families. Before reviewing her excellent research, I had been preparing the article below which echoes and strengthens her findings. In future postings, I will attempt to weave her public work into the growing narrative of the Holymans in Tring and Cuddington, England in the 16th and 17th centuries. My thanks to Jeanette, Joe Parker and all for making available to the larger Holliman, Holleman, Hollimon, etc. families their increasing knowledge of our historic roots.

Last spring my cousin Maxine Wright, a relentless researcher in pursuit of Holliman origins, mailed me the following information of one Richard Wedon, who lived in Botley, a small village near Cholesbury and Tring. As one can read in the first paragraph of this p. 187 of The Register, published 1954, Richard had to pay a fine in 1567 for breaking the head on another man's servant. Hmmm....

Richard must have matured because nine years later, in 1576 he married Jayne Holyman in Cholesbury, near Tring. The information below states that this Jayne Holyman was from 'a yeoman family of good standing in Cuddington', descendents of Bishop John Holyman, whose life we have reviewed in previous blogs.

Several other items leap out at us. Richard and Jayne had a son named James who evidently immigrated to Rhode Island! Did James join a cousin named Ezekiel of Tring in Rhode Island?One remembers that Ezekiel Holyman, an Anabaptist, baptised Roger Williams the founder of Rhode Island!

Notice that Richard Wedon writes a will in 1618 (it is probated in 1624, presumably the year of his death). The will is witnessed by William Holyman. Double click to enlarge.

Now the issue grows more complicated. Above we have Jayne Holliman married to Richard Wedon. Below in another section of the Register, we have a John Holyman appearing in marriage in 1593 and dying a few years later. Goodbye to this John who had no children.

However, now William Holyman, the eldest son of another William Holyman, appears again (noticed who witnessed Richard Wedon's will), baptized June 1583 and his sister Priscilla February 1584/5. They have a brother named Ezekiel.

This Ezekiel according to many web sites and those who have researched Baptist Church history is the Ezekiel who sailed to Massachusetts and helped found Rhode Island!

Notice in the next paragraph an Ann Holyman married another Wedon May 1586, and is noted as a probable daughter of Leonard Holyman and a sister of Jane Holyman.

Confusing? Yes, but stay with me. In the next blog, we are going to examine Leonard Holyman and his offspring. In web sites, Leonard is listed as the father of Ezekiel Holyman.

So, two thoughts emerge:

1. Leonard Holyman and other Holymans of Tring and Cholesbury, including Ezekiel, are indeed descendants of Bishop John Holyman of Cuddington.

2. Bishop John Holyman, a devout Roman Catholic, therefore is probably a great or great great uncle or cousin of Ezekiel Holyman, who was religiously antithetical by 180 degrees, to his prominent descendant, an Anabaptist in America! For those interested in religious history this is an amazing journey for a family. One generation burns Protestants at the stake; another helps establish the Baptist Church in Rhode Island.

So are all these interesting Holymans our direct ancestors? Ancestors, most probably yes; direct, we still do not know.

The elusive John Holyman, who died in Virginia in 1650 and is named in various web sites as the father of Christopher Holliman, Sr. (whom we know is the father of the American Hollimans), still has not appeared in the Tring records many of us have researched.

More in the next posting on resolving this mystery. Is our Christopher Sr. really from Bedford, Bedfordshire, another 30 miles or so up the road from Tring? Stayed tuned for more research....