A Gathering at Mary Daly Herrin's Home

by Glenn N. Holliman

Several weeks ago, my father, Bishop Holliman, b. December 17, 1919, in Irondale, Alabama, returned to his childhood home to visit his niece, Mary Daly Herrin.  Dad now lives in Avilla, Indiana, just north of Fort Wayne.  That is the childhood home of his wife, Ellen Parks Cox Holliman. They have been married for sixteen years.

While I posted photographs that Mary's son David had emailed me, David's sister, Linda Herrin Bradley sent several more.  Taken together, these deserve a more permanent place on this blog.

On the left, right to left, Ellen, Bishop, Patti Holliman Hairston and Linda Herrin Bradley. 

Patti is the daughter of Melton (1908-1958) and Ida Hughes Holliman (1905-1995) and Linda, the daughter of  E.C. (1930-2015) and Mary Daly Herrin. Mary is far right in the right picture.


Patti and Mary are first cousins, both with numerous grandchildren. Mary, a matriarch of the extended family, is the daughter of Robert W. and Vena Holliman Daly. She is the first born grandchild of Ulyss (1884-1965) and Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955). Ulyss and Pearl were born in Fayette County, Alabama, married there in 1906, farmed and around 1917 moved to Irondale, Alabama.

Irondale was a growing suburb of Birmingham, a city then exploding in population due to its steel industry and World War I. Ulyss, who had wood working experience, went to work for the Birmingham Electric Company which ran the street car lines.  The trolleys were then wood frame with wooden benches.  In 1921, a large family house was constructed at 2300 3rd Avenue North in Irondale sans painting and running water. There tw0 children were born and seven grew to adulthood.  This writer in 1946 spent the first two weeks of his life in the house with Grandmother Holliman teaching my mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015) how to be take care of a wiggly, loud infant.

The day before the above pictures were taken, Ralph Holliman (b 1924) and his wife, Laura, living in Gulf Shores, Alabama drove up to Birmingham for the reunion.  Bishop and Ralph are pictured below.  The ladies left to right are Ellen, Bishop's wife, Mary and Laura Mills Holliman, Ralph's wife.

In the picture below, Mary's two sons - David (b 1964), left, and Clayton Herrin (b 1953), far right, join their great uncles in group pose.

Bishop and Ralph are the two surviving children of Ulyss and Pearl who had seven children between 1908 and 1924.  The children who have passed away are Melton, Vena (1909-1990), Euhal (1912-1989), Loudelle (1914-1998) and Virginia (1922-2011).

Writers have called the generation of these seven children 'The Greatest Generation' because they survived the Great Depression, fought World War II and helped build the largest economy in the world.  To all my aunts and uncles, I tip my hat and thank them for raising the 18 grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl!

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

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 26

by Glenn N. Holliman

 H. Bishop Holliman turns 95!

 Above at home in Avilla, Indiana, comforted by his wife of fourteen years, Ellen Cox Holliman, Bishop enjoys his sun room and his cappuccino.  He turns 95 on December 17, 2014, eyesight and hearing diminished, but mind clear and understated sense of humor ever present.  He continues to write of his youth in his beloved Irondale, Alabama, trains and his World War years.  In fact, an article about a girl he met on the train at Chistmas 1942 will be appearing this February 2015 in the magazine The Good Ole Days.  With tongue-in-cheek, he has bequeathed his 'little black book' to his nephew Charles H. Ferrell!

Below from his 1991 handwritten memoirs, the Christmas of 1942, the family story he told us every holiday season for decades as we gathered around the family table....as his son, a mere 68 years of age, I am happy to post it this holiday season.- GNH

I'll be Home for Christmas 1942 by H. Bishop Holliman

For H. Bishop Holliman, November 1942 would see his one year anniversary in the U.S. Navy.  Now he was a radioman on the USS Butler, a brand new Navy destroyer.  The 'terrible ordeal' of the shake down cruise off the coast of New England over, the 1,000 or so ton ship was ready for war duty, to protect convoys and ward off German U-boats during World War II.

"Eventually the Butler was ready for sea duty, and our first voyage was to Bermuda escorting a convoy of merchant ships.  It was an uneventful trip, and I have forgotten how long we were gone.  I'm sure we returned to Philly for a short stay, and I continued to see Gerry when I had liberty." 

"Gerry" or Geraldine Stansbery would become Bishop's wife June 26, 1945, one of three war time marriages in his immediate family.  This one lasted forty-two years, produced three children, eight grandchildren and as of this writing, fourteen great grandchildren. She became a widow this year, losing her husband of twenty-five years, The Rev. Don Feick, an Episcopal priest.  Age 91, she now resides in a retirement home in Cookeville, Tennessee.

"In mid-December, we escorted a convoy to Galveston, Texas, and this voyage took several days coming and going.  I suppose when I left Philly it was a 'tearful good-by', as I had no idea when ever I would return there.  I had no assurance I would ever see Gerry again.  I promised to write and thereby hangs a tale!

Upon our return from Galveston on Christmas Eve 1942, I was granted unexpected leave, so I boarded the train in Norfolk, Virginia and rode all day and night transferring, I guess at Lynchburg, Virginia to the Southern, thinking it would take me all the way to Birmingham.  The train was 'standing room' only, and I remember enjoying the company of a girl part of the way.  She probably had been to see a sailor friend, but I detected no lasting inclination toward him!"

Left, the railroad routes in the southern U.S. in the first half of the 20th Century.  Passenger service soared during World War II and crashed after the conflict.  Air passenger traffic and the Interstate Highway System doomed most passenger trains by the 1960s.

"While in route, I learned the train terminated in Atlanta, and I would have to get to Alabama the best way I could.  Since I wanted to surprise the family (and walk in on Christmas Day), I had not called, so no one knew I was homeward bound.  Well, the train reached Atlanta in the dead of night, and the next one to Birmingham would be up in the day, so I devised another way to get home as soon as I could.  I went down to the Greyhound Station and rode a bus on home, arriving in Irondale just about day break the day after Christmas."

Raised on small farms in Fayette County, Alabama, and farmers in their early married life, Pearl and Ulyss Holliman continued to grow a large garden and raised chickens (as did millions of Americans) at their home at 2300 3rd Avenue North in Irondale, Alabama.  Pearl sent this photograph to her son Bishop in 1942, promising to save some of the chickens for his next time home.  This writer can remember as a child her fried chicken, collard greens and butter from her kitchen churn.

"I can still remember the excitement my appearance at the front door generated for Mama, Daddy and all the others.  But I was finally home and glad to be there on my second Christmas in the navy.  My leave was for only a few days, because I was to be assigned to radio school in Cosco Bay, Maine, January 1, 1943."

For contact information to send Bishop birthday or Christmas greetings, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.

 Next posting, more World War letters of an Alabama Holliman family.... 

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!).

There is also a massive Ancestry.com Holyman and Associated Families Tree available for review.  For an invitation to this collection of over 20,000 individuals, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.  

I also have a collection of associated family manuscripts and research collected by the late Walt Holliman, Cecil Holliman and Rhodes Holliman.  Happy to send these materials by email and to insure their research is available.  The surnames: Alexander, Baldwin, Barham, Bass, Beall, Blakeney,  Baker, Bond, Bostick, Brewer, Bryan, Bryant, Bullock, Calvert, Carter, Champion, Chew,Cofer, Cole, Crafford, Crockett, Curtis, Dale, Daniel, Davidson, Davies, De Mallpas, Douglas, Duckett, Edwards, Edgerton, Emerson, Fitzhugh, Fowlehurst, Fox, Gains, Garrison, Gonson, Graves, Gray, Guyton, Guins, Hall, Hamby, Hawkins,Hendrix, Hill, Hogg, Holliman, Holt, Howard, Jackson, Jones, Judkins, Love, Lucas, Maget, Mansfield, Manwaring, McBee, McComas, McCurdy, McNewsome, Nicholson, Norsworthy, Noyall, O'dell, Oliver, Pearce, Peerce, Pettigrew, Petway, Pitman, Plow, Plyler, Porten, Prather, Petite, Ridgely, Riggan, Roberts, Smith, Spencer, Sprigg, Standley, Stanyard, Swan, Strother, Thompson, Thornton, Thrope, Trelawney, Turpin, Underhill, Underwood, Wallace, Walters, Weedon, Whitherspoon, Whitten,Williams,Wilmot,Wilson, Whitaker and Yerby.  These are mainly Alabama families and their ancestors from the Carolinas and Virginia. Materials vary from one page to 200. - GNH at glennhistory@gmail.com.

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman

Virginia Ruth Holliman Cornelius, 1922

the Sixth Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman

Below is a charming 1959 Christmas card of Carol and Susan Cornelius at their home in Homewood, Alabama.  Both girls now live in Texas with their own families and grandchildren.

On Virginia's 80th birthday in 2002, her daughters prepared a lovely multi-page biography of their Mother.  I can't improve on it, so I reproduce it here with their permission.  Just click on the pages and it will enlarge for reading purposes.

Here is a photo from the 2002 birthday party when this biography was presented. Left to right, Motie Holliman, who has passed away, Ralph Holliman, Virginia, Bishop Holliman and Bishop's wife, Ellen Cox Holliman. Ralph is in the insert picture in the biography above.

More of her printed biography in the next post....


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.