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