From Generation to Generation

The Passing of the Grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman by Glenn N. Holliman

It is said that funerals become a time for family reunions, and so it was recently with the passing of a gentle, vibrant soul, Jean Holliman, the fourth of six children of Euhal and Edna Westbrook Holliman.  Sadly, Jean's death was the most recent of the loss of four other grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman in the past few years.

                 Euhal, Edna and Jean, 1985

 Since 2023, we have lost cousins Terry Holliman, Nancy Carol Cornelius Morton,  Mary Daly Herrin and Robert W. Daly, Jr.

To refresh memories there were nineteen children born to the seven children of Ulyss (1884-1965) and Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) of Fayette County and later in life, Irondale, Alabama.  The seven children in chonological birth order are Melton (1908-1958), Vena (1909-1990), Euhal (1912-1989), Loudell (1914-1998), Bishop (1919-2018), Virginia (1922-2011) and Ralph (1924-2017).

Nineteen grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl were born between 1931 and 1956. Thirteen survive as of this writing.

Attending Jean's funeral in Trussville, Alabama were left to right Jean's brother Bill, his family Kathryn Holliman Woods, Kyle Finley (Joey's husband). Rossi Arnold (Bill's grand daughter), Joey Holliman (Rossi's mother), then Bill's wife Beverly Holliman and Bill's brother-in-law Wally Allen, husband of Tommie Holliman.

Also present left to right, this writer, Glenn N. Holliman, Wally Allen next to his daughter Holly, Tommie Holliman Allen, Brian Allen, Linda Herrin Bradley, David Herrin and Alice Holliman Murphy.  Other family members, Nancy Holliman Justice and her husband Bobby were present but out of camera range.  Nancy lives in Southaven MS about a 5 minute drive from her mother Ann, the third born child of Euhal and Edna.  Nancy's two sons Michael and Jeffery live in Dothan, Alabama.

The family of Euhal and Edna had lost Jerry Holliman in 2003 and his twin, Terry Holliman on December 28, 2023.  Bill Holliman emailed me the following on Terry's life.

"Terry passed on Dec 28, 2023 at his home in Green Valley AZ. He joined the Anchorage, Alaska Fire Department as a volunteer while serving in the Army. His duty station in the Army was in the Federal Building in downtown Anchorage. The fire station was across the street from the Federal Building. He retired from the fire department with the rank of assistant fire chief.  He had four children with Georgi Hercha, his first wife.  Terry Ann died at birth, and three who survive him, Bronwyn, Jodi and Jason. His second wife Deborah had a child, Samantha, from a previous marrieage that Terry adopted."  Picture right are Debbie and Terry in 2001.

Like Terry and Jerry, their brother Bill was attracted to Alaska, going to college there and working in the airline industry. He returned to Birmingham to the employment of another airline and over twenty-five years was stationed at five different airports. His next career move led to being a freight customs broker, and then a position with the Customs and Border Protection agency in Memphis, finally retiring for good in 2019.

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The picture left is of Jerry Holliman with his nephew Brian Allen in 2002.

Terry's twin brother Jerry had entered the Army at the same time as Terry, only he was sent to Germany.  When Jerry left the Army, he joined Terry in Anchorage.  As noted, Jerry died July 16, 2003 while employed as a supervisor with Alaska Airline."

This writer, who spent the first two weeks of his life at the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman home on 3rd Avenue in Irondale in 1946, remembered a time in the early 1960s when Jean joined me on a walk on the property pointing out where Grandmother Holliman had located her chicken house. There was Christmas 1960 when Bobby Daly and I played touch football with Jerry and Terry on the Daly lawn in Irondale.  Such memories of cousins, the aunts and uncles, form the fabric of a person's life.

In my next articles, will celebrate the lives of departed cousins Mary Daly Herrin, Robert W. Daly, Jr. and Nancy Carol Cornelius Morton.

A Visit Between Two Storms

by Glenn N. Holliman

On March 3, 2020 a vicious late-winter tornado touched down in Nashville, Tennessee, hop-scotched along I-40 east and destroyed homes in the suburbs of Cookeville, Tennessee.  There 18 persons died in just a few minutes of horror.

Fortunately my sister Becky Holliman Payne and her family who live in that Cumberland Plateau community escaped the violence and quickly joined hundreds of others in providing relief to those afflicted.  A long scheduled trip to visit cousins and our old home places in Alabama had been planned with my sister, Alice Holliman Murphy and me.  We  were to fly from our domiciles in Texas and Pennsylvania respectively to Nashville on March 5th and then drive south.

As the Nashville airport was open and professional first responders were busy at work, we decided to go ahead with our plans.  We met that afternoon of the 5th, and the three of us drove  to Florence, Alabama.

Little did we know that one storm was behind us and another, more dangerous, approaching!

The next morning, we spent much of the day with our first cousin, Bob Daly, son of Robert W. Sr. and Vena Holliman Daly at his home north of Florence.  His home is really a nature conservancy where for decades Bob has nurtured his 40 acres as a wildlife park.

Pictured are Alice, Becky and Bob.

A  Ph.D. in biology and botany from Auburn, Bob taught for decades at the University of North Alabama and also conducted hundreds of environmental studies for governmental and corporate agencies.  It is not an exaggeration to say that Bob is one of the most knowledgeable persons living concerning the flora, fauna and animal life of the Tennessee River Valley.

His home, which he shares with his wife, Joy, his high school sweetheart from Irondale, Alabama, reflects Bob's taste in outdoor life.  The home feels like a comfortable forest lodge with wooden paneling, chandeliers of antlers and walls festooned with scenes of wildlife and southern history.

Below the Daly 'lodge' in the woods of North Alabama.

Bob bands hummingbirds, captured in a special trap filled with sugar water on a back porch.  Generally he attracts up to 400 of these tiny birds each migration season!  The ladies are watching a video on his computer of dozens of these beautiful creatures feeding.

Outside on the grounds, two cousins, now seniors in life, reminisce on how we used to hunt arrow heads along Alabama river bottoms and scorpions under the scrub oak trees on the Daly farm in Irondale, oh say 60 years ago or so!

Below are photographs I have saved (and hundreds and hundreds more of family) from the various  albums.  Here is a quick trip down memory lane of Bob and family in the 1940s and 50s.  The initial picture is of Bob in the sailor's hat, one year old me and my mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman (1923-2015), on the front lawn at 2300 N. 3rd Avenue in Irondale, our grandparents house.

The one below is damaged, but shows Bob on the left,  Pam Holliman in the center, Ralph and Motie Holliman's first born.  Three year old me on the right. The year is 1949.   Again photographed at Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman's Irondale home.  Judging from the way Pam and I are dressed, this must have been a Sunday in the summer.

Below, Bob, Becky and Glenn at Daytona Beach, Florida in 1955. Grandmother Holliman had died in May 1955, and the Dalys and  Bishop Hollimans took Ulyss Holliman on vacation.  I remember a day of fishing with my grandfather, father and Bob. Below we are digging for sand fleas.

Finally, Bob with his father, Robert W. Daly, Sr. (1901-1959) and his mother, Vena (1909-1990).  The family loved to visit Florida and fish.  These experiences no doubt helped develop Bob's life long interest in biology.

After the better part of the day with Bob, and significantly increasing our knowledge of nature's mysteries,  my sisters and I bid goodbye to our very knowledgeable first cousin, and drove on to Gadsden, Alabama where we lived from 1960 to 1964.  More on our trip in the next blog. - GNH 

Lost Pictures Found of 1968 Reunion, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Lost and Now Found

Last summer I published on this site, photographs I had taken with a simple Kodak Instamatic camera of the Holliman/Daly/Ferrell/Herrin/Cornelius gathering in Irondale, Alabama, July 1968.  At that writing, I thought all the pictures of that day had been recovered, but fortunately I was wrong. 

Since then, my sister, Becky Holliman Payne of Cookeville, Tennessee, has found approximately 400 slides in memorabilia boxes of our Mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015).  Our sister, Alice Holliman Murphy of Trophy Club, Texas scanned them and gave me electronic copies.  My Mother also had an Instamatic camera, a simple marvel of that time when one popped in a cartridge, and the film advanced after each picture.

So here are some of the ‘lost’ pictures she and my father took from 1967 to 1976. Step back then in time and find yourself or your parents and grandparents much younger, and several of us, much thinner and with other spouses.  This was over a half century ago, a summer of much disconnect in America with an unpopular war, two political assassinations and a Southern family adjusting to the Civil Rights revolution of that time.

Left to right, Alice Holliman Murphy, age 12, Mary Daly Herrin, b. 1931, the first grandchild of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, Linda Herrin Bradley, now living in Orange Beach, Alabama, and my mother, Gerry Stansbery Holliman Feick.    

Below, Alice and Linda embrace David and Suzanne Herrin, Linda’s younger siblings. 

Above left to right, are Charles and Loudelle Ferrell.  Charles (1907-1999) was a United Methodist Church minister, a graduate of Birmingham-Southern and Yale Divinity School. Loudelle (1914-1998) was the third child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman to marry.  They had three children, Charles, Carolyn and John.

In the background are Jean Holliman and Tommie Holliman Allen, two of the six children of Euhal, far right gesturing with his hands, and Edna Westbrook Holliman (1916-1992), not pictured here.  In 1968, Euhal (1912-1989) and his family were living at 2300 3^rd Avenue North in Irondale in the home of his late parents, Ulyss (1884-1965) and Pearl (1888-1955).

Finally, in a white dress in the foreground is Kathy Holliman listening to her Uncle Euhal as is her father, Ralph Holliman (1924-2017).  Ralph was a corporate executive for American Bakeries in Chicago, eventually retiring to Gulf Shores, Alabama with his wife, Motie (1924-2003), not pictured here.

Below left to right is George Hairston, Patti Holliman’s husband.  Patti (in sun glasses) is the daughter of Melton (1908-1958) and Ida Holliman (1905-1995).  Next is Susan Cornelius Williams and her sister, Carol Cornelius Morton with her husband, Carl Blomstran.  Susan and Carol are the daughters of Walter (1922-2005) and Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011), the sixth child of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman.

Look soon for another posting and more photographs of this 1968 family gathering at the home of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin in Irondale, Alabama.

Birthday # 96!!

by Glenn N. Holliman

Homer Bishop Holliman has another birthday!

Below age 96, he takes his daily walk and enjoys a cup of cappuccino ever afternoon.
  He has lived as long as his maternal grandmother, Lula Hocutt Caine (1861-1957), a native of Fayette County, Alabama who moved to Irondale, Alabama during World War I.  Her three daughters and their families followed, finding employment in the Magic City of Birmingham, a steel and coal metropolis, which sprang out of a cotton field in the early 1870s.

Bishop, my father, was born December 17, 1919, the year of the over-reaching Versailles Treaty was signed and an angry young German veteran, Adolph Hitler, joined the Nazi Party.  At age 22, Bishop was in the U.S. Navy preparing to brave the U-Boat submarines of a revived Germany under the leadership a tyrannical dictator.  Two of his brothers, Melton and Ralph, followed him into that conflict.

The Irondale of the 1920s and 30s, a working class suburb, a long street car ride from the center of Birmingham, was Bishop's childhood.  At age 9, his mother, Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) let him stay home to hear Herbert Hoover take the oath of office, broadcast through the family's brand new radio.  A brother-in-law, Robert W. Daly, Sr., eventually a prominent banker, gave Bishop's siblings and the boy rides in his open top roadster.  The roads in the late 1920s and early 30s were still red clay or sand around Irondale.  The family had a chicken house, electricity, a cow and eventually in 1936, indoor plumbing.

Below 1932 in Robert's roadster - Ralph, Virginia and Bishop

The house at 2300 3rd Avenue North looked over the switching yards of numerous rail lines.  The romance of the railroad infected Bishop, who for the rest of his life rode the train whenever possible.

After almost four years in World War II, he returned to Alabama with a bride from Philadelphia.  The couple had three children.  

The G.I. Bill allowed Bishop to finish college at Birmingham-Southern, a prelude to five years of teaching.  In 1952, he returned again to earn his living from Uncle Sam, this time an employee of the Social Security Administration, the old age retirement and disability program that his Republican father, Ulyss Holliman (1884-1965), had railed against as an infamous part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Bishop would retire as manager of the office in Cookeville, Tennessee.

Right, Bishop and Geraldine Stansbery, 1945 at Bishop's home in Irondale, Alabama.



Bishop thrived in Cookeville, becoming a prominent member of the community.  Over the years he was president of the Rotary, United Way, the library board, the Red Cross and the local railroad depot museum and always active in the local United Methodist Church.  The three children all attended Tennessee Tech, the local university and all met spouses there.  Today there are eight grandchildren and sixteen great grandchildren!

Below right, the family in 1966 in Tennessee - Becky, Glenn, Gerry, Alice and Bishop.            



Bishop has outlived his first two wives, good persons both, Geraldine Stansbery and Anne McLaughlin.  In 2000 he married Ellen Cox, a church friend from Gadsden, Alabama.  They make their home in Avilla, Indiana, a friendly community surrounded by Ellen's nieces and nephews.  Dad says it reminds him of Irondale, the home of his youth. 

 Above October 2015, the daily walk with Ellen and the ever faithful Bee Bee.

We can't pick our parents; Mother Nature does that for us.  My two sisters and I won life's lottery being the off spring of Geraldine Stansbery and Bishop Holliman.  Happy Birthday once again to one of the finest men in the world. - GNH

Visits with Cousins

by Glenn N. Holliman

A Month of Cousins...!

There are 18 living first cousins from the seven children of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman.  During the past month, I have had the pleasure of visiting with five of them (not counting my two sisters - Becky and Alice).  So let's interrupt our Holliman 'World War II' story and share some photographs and updates on our mutual lives.

Below, Clayton Herrin, the first born great grandchild of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman, waves from his mother's Irondale, Alabama home which we visited in October.  His mother, right, is, of course, Mary Daly Herrin, the first born of the grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl.  For over a generation the Herrin family (E.C. Herrin, Mary and now Al and Linda Herrin Bradley) have hosted family gatherings. E.C. is ailing now, and all of us have him and the family in thought and prayer.

 

 

The famous Irondale Café was the location of a meal shared in October with Jean Holliman and Tommie Holliman Allen, two of the six children of Euhal and Edna Westbrook Holliman.  Back ground in red, is yours truly, with left to right, Jean, Tommie and my sister, Alice Holliman Murphy.  In the café as one consumes fried chicken and fried green tomatoes one can see embedded in the wooden floors the indentions of counters which held merchandise in the former Daly Hardware. The Daly Hardware Store was owned by Robert W. and George Daly during the 1940s and 50s.

Below, Charles Ferrell, far right, and his wife Nancy, hosted my sister Alice and myself at their home on an October Sunday afternoon in Homewood, Alabama. Charles is the second born grandchild of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman, the first born son of Charles and Loudelle Ferrell Holliman.  He kindly shared hundreds of photos of the Ferrell and Holliman families, now scanned, and which we will be posting later in this space and at MyFamily.com.

Finally, sharing an evening in my home in Newport, Pennsylvania the past week was Dr. Robert W. Daly, Jr, right.  Just retired from his decades long position as a professor of biology from the University of North Alabama, Bob traveled north to visit his son John and his family in southeastern Pennsylvania.  While on this excursion north, Bob stopped in for the night our central Pennsylvania farm house.

It is a pleasure to reconnect with the cousins of one's youth!

Next posting, back to our story of World War II and the Holliman family....

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.






 

My Grandmother's Wall of Photographs, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Is there a grandchild among us who has not stood and stared at family pictures in a grandparent's home?  For a nine year old, the question must be always "Who are those old people?  Did my aunts and uncles really look like that when they were young?" 

Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955) had such a wall in her home at 2300 Third Avenue North in Irondale, Alabama.  As a youngster, I marveled at the pictures and wondered who were all those people, those relatives of mine?  Below are a few pictures and memories of my grandmother's wall of photographs.

 

Let me start with an indoor picture, rare for the time, taken of Grandmother Holliman's Christmas tree. It stood in a corner of the living room, a massive tree to my childish eyes. This picture was taken in 1945, the year before I was born but she seemed aways to have a tall tree with electric lights that 'bubbled'. Yes, it is blurry and not the sharpest picture, but let's study it closely.

On the far upper left corner, one sees a photograph of my Aunt Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011). This may have been her senior picture from Shades Cahaba High School. Today, one of her daughters, Susan Cornelius Wilson of Texas, has possession of it.  

Below, embedded in the lower left corner of Virginia's photograph, notice the World War II photograph of Virginia's husband, Walter Cornelius (1922-2006).  They married in February 1942, one of the three war time marriages in the Ulyss and Pearl Holliman family.  This copy of Virginia and Walter was taken in February 2012 in Trophy Club, Texas.

 

Below Susan Cornelius Williams, one of Walter and Virginia's two daughters, displays this picture seventy years after it first hung in her grandparent's home in Alabama.  These pictures were taken at Alice Holliman Murphy's home in Texas.  Alice is the daughter of Bishop Holliman (b 1919)  and Susan's first cousin.

Next posting, more pictures from Grandmother's wall....

Stewart Butten, Family Friend, Part II
by Bishop Holliman


"Mr. Butten married in the early 1940s and later moved back to Chattanooga and ended up in Knoxville. In 1975, he attended my younger daughter's wedding in Cookeville, Tennessee.  My wife and I visited him in a nursing home once and also in his home. His wife, Hazel, died before he did.


Below, Hazel and Stewart Butten visit with Ralph Holliman in 1975 at the wedding of Alice Holliman and Bill Murphy.  At that time, Mr. Butten was retired and Ralph, Bishop Holliman's youngest brother, was a corporate executive in Chicago.

He went back to Ireland once, I'm sure, after Hazel died, and visited his old home place. He is buried near Seymour, Tennessee. Robert Daly, Sr. died in 1959, and Mr. Butten lived on into the 1980s."

Compare the photo above with the one on the right of the same Ralph Holliman, age perhaps 15, the tallest of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman children, leaning on Mr. Butten at one of those memorable Florida vacations the Robert Dalys made possible for the family.

Next posting a letter by Mr. Butten on the death of Pearl Caine Holliman....

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman

Homer Bishop Holliman, 1919

the Fifth Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman

Of the four sons of Ulyss and Pearl, all left Irondale, Alabama for career reasons, although Euhal moved back to Birmingham from near by Gadsden, Alabama in 1955.  In that generation, we see the diaspora of the Holliman sons.  In the generation of their children and their sisters's children, of the 18 cousins living, only five remain in the Birmingham area at this writing (Charles Ferrell, Mary Herrin, Patti Holliman Hairston, Jean Holliman and Tommie Holliman Allen). 

 Granted, earlier generations of Holliman children had moved across the country from Virginia to North Carolina to Alabama (by 1836), and others then on to Texas, Arkansas and Missouri, but the 18th and 19th Century Hollimans had been looking for land to farm - new fresh, unworked soil lying fallow waiting for the plow.  There were no new farmers of the children and grand children of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman. Beginning with Ulyss's generation and his brothers, one observes the increasing diversity of American occupations as society and industry grew more complex.

The below photograph of Bishop and Gerry Stansbery Holliman was taken in 1958 in W. Columbia, South Carolina, one of the many homes of the family as Bishop climbed a career ladder.  The three children are left to right: Becky Holliman Payne, Alice Holliman Murphy and Glenn Holliman.  When this picture was taken all commercial air travel in America was by propeller and there were no Interstate Highways.  With the exception of small Volkswagens and Fiats, almost all automobiles sold in America were made in Detroit, Michigan.  The rent on the three bedroom house behind us was $80 a month, heated with oil, and cooled with one small window air conditioner.

Bishop left school teaching in January 1952 to take a position with the Social Security Administration, a government retirement and disability program born in the New Deal year of 1935.  So in the summer of 1952 Bishop moved his family from the Irondale area (where he thought he would spend his life) to East Tennessee and later to other southern towns as he climbed the managerial ladder.  By 1964, he alighted in Cookeville, Tennessee as manager of the office there.  It was a good fit.  There was a university (Tennessee Tech) where his three children went to college and met their spouses.  Gerry and Bishop became the mainstay of the local Methodist Church, and both were active in community organizations.  Bishop served as head of the United Way, Rotary Club and Red Cross during the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1990, Bishop married Anne McGauphlin of Hartsville, South Carolina, whom he had first met in 1940 when both attended Methodist youth fellowships in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.  Unfortunately, Anne died of cancer in 1999.  Left to right are Glenn, Bishop, Anne, Alice and Becky.  Click on photos to enlarge.

In January 1983, he retired from his federal work.  The year 1988 saw the dissolving of his war time marriage (not the first or last marriage to do so).  His former Methodist youth friend, Anne McGaughlin of Hartsville, South Carolina became his new bride in 1990.  Their marriage was happy until her death due to cancer in 1998.  In 2000, he looked up a widow he had known in earlier decades in Gadsden, Alabama.  Before the year was out, Ellen Cox became the new Mrs. Holliman.  They live today near her family in Avila, Indiana.  My father continues to astound us!

In 2002, Virginia Holliman Cornelius, Bishop's only surviving sister, celebrated her 80th birthday.  Left to right are Virginia, her daughter, Carol Cornelius Morton, Bishop and wife, Ellen Cox Holliman.

Next post, we will celebrate the life of Virginia Holliman Cornelius, a pioneer in Alabama banking....

Note: The information and opinions expressed in these family biographies are those of the writer alone. Comments, corrections and additions are most welcome. The purpose of these articles is to capture a period and family in American history and to pass this legacy along to future generations who share the common bond of family.

Plan now to attend the Holliman and Associated Families Genealogical Round Table at the Fayette County, Alabama Civic Center, 10 am to 3 pm, Saturday, October 15, 2011. For information and reservations for lunch, contact Glenda Norris at gnorris@bcbsal.org or Glenn Holliman at Glennhistory@gmail.com.  Sessions to include Tracing the Holymans from England to Alabama, Holliman Farm Sites in Fayette County and sharing of information on Associated Families.  All invited  All invited, including the Holliman social at the Rose House Inn, Fayette, 5:30 pm to 9 pm, Friday, October 14th.