When my Grandfather was Young, Part 3

 by Glenn N. Holliman

My Grandfather made a Decision to Relocate.  The Decision reverberates to this Day.

He closed his barber shop when he married and started farming again, the worn out soil of Fayette County, Alabama.  He had married Pearl Caine Holliman in November1907.  He began engaging in civic affairs being listed as an election officer in 1910.  This interest in politics which he shared with several of his brothers would result in him running for the state legislature in the 1930s and 1940s as a Republican.  

Children came rapidly for the young couple - Melton 1909, Vena 1910, Euhal 1912 and Loudelle 1914. The clippings that follow are from the Fayette, Alabama newspaper.

1910

So in 1912, Ulyss, his wife, Pearl and his first three children moved to town, Fayette, Alabama.  My late father believed Ulyss worked in the lumber yard. 

1912

1913

The far left child is Vena Holliman Daly and Melton P. Holliman on the far right.  The remaining children may be cousins, perhaps the Lee Cook family.

 1915

Vena Holliman Daly and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell taken in Fayette, Alabama, 

1916

Occasionally, Ulyss had some fun such as this steam boat ride he took with two of his brothers in 1916.  Can you see him in the far left, 2nd row with the hat pushed back on his head?  This photograph was saved by Cecil  Rhodes Holliman (1901-1986), son of James Monroe Holliman (1876-1940), father of Cecil and grandfather of Rhodes B. Holliman (1928-2014).  Rhodes' son, Dr. Jim Holliman, resides in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  His second cousin, once removed (this writer) and wife Barbara, often visit Jim and his wife, Karen, who live an hour away from our home in Newport, Pennsylvania.  The copy in the second picture is from Cecil, a first cousin to my father, Bishop Holliman (1919-2018).

The Fateful Dinner of September 1915

Floyd Caine, the only brother of my grandmother, Pearl Caine Holliman, had moved to Irondale, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, the "Magic City" which experienced explosive growth for its first 50 years.  Floyd was labeled a doctor in this article.  That is exaggeration as he was a pharmacist who had left the farm life in Fayette County and acquired rudimentary skills of pills and tonics.  All four families recorded in the second paragraph would follow Floyd by late 1917 to reside in Irondale.  They were his parents and three sisters.  Ulyss was not in attendance; he must have been with the children.

What did they discuss that visit?  Impressed they must have been by Floyd's economic success.  Economic opportunities were limited in Fayette and the the Cooks and Hollimans had large families to feed.  By 1917 the decision was made leave Fayette, the home of the Hollimans since 1836.  Life would change forever for their children and opened up vistas for the grandchildren that would follow.

 

1918

This newspaper clipping in early 1918 confirms Ulyss had taken his family to Birmingham.

By 1918 the Hollimans and Caines made Irondale their homes.  The Cooks would follow.  Ulyss acquired a carpenter's job with the Birmingham Electric Company which owned the streetcar line.  He would work for them until retirement in 1949. Occasionally Ulyss experienced mishaps in the big city. 

 1920

From the Birmingham News

We don't know if Ulyss ever recovered this money, probably equivalent of a week's pay.  We know in 1940 his annual salary was $1,600.  Did he lose his wallet on the street car to a light fingered thief?  Perhaps.  My father remembered an occasion when his father, very ticklish, was a window seat passenger on the street car coming home holding a package of meat for the family.  A 'friend' tickled him, playfully, and Ulyss, surprised, threw up his arms and the package went sailing out an open window.  No hamburger that night in Irondale.

1960 

The Singer Barber Sings Again!

Cousin Pam Holliman, my Uncle Ralph Holliman's daughter, found this clipping from the Birmingham News.  Uylss, age 76, could still belt out a song as pictured above!  I never saw him sing; in fact I never saw him smile.  His grandchildren missed a lot.  He passed away in 1965, age 81.  Oh, I wish I could have heard him sing. - GNH

1960 

When My Grandfather was Young, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

 Some More Revealing Facts on my Grandfather's Younger Years!

Above, early 1900s, my grandfather, Ulyss S. Holliman

with one of his brothers, right, Lealand Holliman.

The Singing Barber

The next two clippings are from the same front page of the Fayette Banner in 1906.  The first one describes my grandfather performing in front of his brother James Monroe Holliman's clothing store in downtown Fayette.  Were they paid to sing and perhaps dance a twostep?!

 Was the performance to drum up business for Ulyss's new enterprise, a barber shop?  Goodness, Grand Dad was a singing barber!  I remember my father speaking often that his father used to cut his hair (and his brothers).  I thought it was to save 25 cents but obviously I underestimated my Grandfather's skills!

1906

The Barber Marries and Returns to Farming

How long did the barber shop last?  Not past 1910 when the census recorded Ulyss as a farmer, married to Pearl Caine Holliman and father of two babies, Melton and Vena. That marriage occurred in November 1907 as the next clipping attests.  Martin Creek was a crossroads south of Fayette.

1907

A Republican in a Democratic South

Farmer Ulyss became the father of a son in 1908 (Melton) and a daughter (Vena) in 1909. In 1910, he had some status in the community, an election manager in an off-year contest.  This is the first public mention of my Grandfather interested in politics. In later years, he would be engaged along with his brother James Monroe Holliman and his sons Cecil R. and Charles B. Holliman (and even my father, Bishop, in 1946) as Republican nominees for state offices.   

 Above 1898 James Monroe and Elizabeth Baker Holliman; below their sons Cecil Rhodes and Charles Baker Holliman, 1911.

The Holliman family was Republican when 90% of the white population in Alabama voted Democratic after Reconstruction from the Civil War.  Brother James Monroe Holliman served as probate judge in Fayette County for many years, elected and reelected as a Republican.  Why did the family embrace the minority party that in the generation after the Civil War, the party of Reconstruction that included Black elected officials and civil rights for former slaves?

I have long speculated on this question and asked my Father and the late Rhodes B. Holliman, Cecil R. Holliman's son, that question.  Several answers might be that Fayette County was in the region of Alabama with few slaves and little of the plantation wealth that developed in areas of the state with more fertile soil. As with the neighboring counties of Walker and Winston, pro-Union or 'Tory' sentiment was not uncommon.  Uriah Holliman (1817-1862), the grandfather of Ulyss, was a prosperous farmer who by 1860 owned 900 acres and managed the enterprise with numerous children and no servants.  Caught up in the initial enthusiasm of secession, Uriah, age, 42, enlisted and tragically died of 'camp fever' along with his son, Charles (1842-1862), after the 1862 Battle of Shiloh.

Mary 'Polly' Lucas Holliman (18...-1911) mother John Thomas Holliman. We have no photograph of her husband, Uriah (1820- 1862) 

Another Uriah son, my great grandfather, John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930), joined the Confederate Army in May 1862, the same month his father died.  The Confederate government already faced a manpower shortage just one year into the war and offered young men either $50 and service with lads from their community or be drafted into the general army and no bonus.  Eighteen years old, a farm hand and poorly educated, John joined with his friends.

John Thomas Holliman, Ulyss' father

In February 1865 after seven major battles and never a leave home, he and two other Fayette County young men, hungry and cold, crossed over from Robert E. Lee's lines in Petersburg, Virginia and gave themselves up to the Union Army.  There is evidence they even joined the Union Army, but John seemed to have slipped between enlistment and being a prisoner of war.  He was sent to work on a farm in Indiana, stayed until the crop harvest and then walked home to Alabama in September 1865, barefoot, carrying his precious shoes.

James Franklin Holliman, an uncle of Ulyss

John is quoted as saying the conflict was 'A rich man's war and a poor man's fight'.  My great grandfather probably suffered from what today we call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  He attended his brother James Franklin Holliman's school for less than a week that autumn of 1865, settled into farming, lost his first wife in childbirth, who bore a son, William. 

He remarried Martha Jane Walker, a daughter of a Civil War veteran, and they had five sons, the last being Ulyss. In their old age, the sons (those that could) helped support their parents.  Five of the six sons would eventually leave Fayette County seeking livelihoods in other Alabama towns and cities.  While they lived into their 80s, both parents died in poverty there being no Social Security or government safety net for the elderly until the arrival of the Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s.

Below in 1928, John Thomas and Martha Jane Walker Holliman

Next article Ulyss leaves the farm and makes the first of two moves fundamental to the lives of his children. - GNH