From my Sister's Attic, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

The First of a Number of Photographs from an Attic - 

Three Generations in 1952

First row, left to right, Glenn, Pam and Becky Holliman.  Second row, Motie, Ulyss, Pearl and Gerry Holliman.  Back row, Ralph holding Kathy.

Recently my two sisters, Rebecca L. Holliman Payne and Alice Holliman Murphy found the above photograph in one of my late father's scrapbooks.  Bishop and Ralph, two sons,  of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman posed with their parents, wives and children at Bishop and Gerry Stansbery Holliman's house in Trussville, Alabama. The time may have been early spring on a Sunday afternoon judging by the formality of the clothing.

Both Ralph and Bishop, my father, World War II veterans, took advantage of the G.I. Bill for college education and by 1952 were launched on careers in business and government.  Both would do well, and unlike so many in the 21st Century stayed with one company (Ralph - American Bakeries and Bishop - the Social Security Administration) their entire working careers. Both men moved their families many times as promotions and more responsibilities came.  

The families enjoyed the incredible economic post-war boom that pushed the American standard of living to record heights.

The four children pictured above all attended college and graduate school in the 1960s and 70s and developed careers in education, social services, publications and church.  The girls, unlike their mothers and their grandmother, worked outside of the home as did the majority of women in the latter part of the 20th Century.

Presaging his son's experiences, Ulyss moved his family for economic reasons during World War I from Fayette, Alabama to Birmingham.  Raised on a farm, Ulyss married Pearl in 1906, farmed and later worked in a lumber yard.  By 1914 with four children to feed (Melton, Vena, Euhal and Loudelle), Ulyss move his family to Irondale and found employment with the Birmingham Electric Company repairing street cars.  Three more children were born: Bishop 1919, Virignia 1922 and Ralph 1924.  Ulyss retired in 1949 and died in 1965. 

When Ulyss was born in 1884, there were no automobiles, telephones, electricity, radio, television or airplanes.  When he passed away men circled the earth in spacecraft and computers were crunching numbers.  Never in human history had there been so much technological change as during the life time of my grandfather.

More on Trussville, a suburb of Birmingham

The Bishop and Gerry Holliman house in Trussville, Alabama, built 1937, purchased by in 1950 was sold in 1952 when my father's new employment in the Social Security system resulted in a transfer to Johnson City, Tennessee.  The address is 207 Oak Street and the neighborhood is today a National Historical District. The house sold in 1952 for $8,000.

The City of Trussville web site records that 287 residential units were built between 1936 and 1938 as part of the New Deal federal programs to provide housing, employment and stimulate the economy still suffering from the Great Depression.  The 615 acre suburban development was constructed on land unsuitable for farming, the former 'Slag Heap Village' taking its unpleasant name from the metal waste from a former iron furnace.  

"The homes were sturdily built with indoor plumbing, running water, electricity and amenities rare at the time in much of Alabama" records the city web site.  Parks, paved streets and sidewalks were the norm.  "Trussville children in the 50s enjoyed an uncomplicated, small-town life. Children entertained themselves by walking up and down the street playing on the Mall, and swimming in the Cahaba.  Most of families has only one car or no vehicle, but a bus went daily into Birmingham in the morning and came back that afternoon."

Trussville incorporated in 1947, absorbing both the Cahaba Village (the development) and 'Old Trussville.  The next year, the government deeded all park property to the town. 

The Passing of a Generation, Part 1

The last child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman has Passed, and the Greatest Generation comes to an End

By Glenn N. Holliman

My father, Homer Bishop Holliman, left picture 2002, born December 17, 1919, breathed his last at 3:10 p.m. on Saturday, June 9, 2018.  He was surrounded at his Cookeville, Tennessee hospital bed by his three children – Becky, Alice and yours truly.  And my two children, Grace and Chris and Becky’s son, Bryan.  His last illness was only a few days and mercifully largely free of pain and discomfort.

My Dad lived through 40% of the history of the United States, his days largely spent in the 2oth Century America.  A prolific writer, he recorded stories of his family, his growing up in Alabama and his observations on the time and culture in which he moved and had his being.

His parents, Ulyss and Pearl, born respectively in 1884 and 1888 in rural Fayette County, Alabama, were descendants of 17^th century immigrants from the British Isles.  In 1836, my branch of the Hollimans migrated to west Alabama from the Carolina's.

Dad’s grandfather, John Thomas Holliman, 1844-1930, photo right 1900, fought in seven major battles for the Confederacy in the 1860s serving under Braxton Bragg, James Longstreet and Robert E. Lee.  He returned home in 1865, became a ‘dirt farmer’, had six sons, the last being Ulyss.  My father knew his grandfather and remembered him as a tall ancient man, thin with a long white beard.  John Thomas Holliman was almost illiterate and died a year before his wife, Martha Jane Walker.  My great grandmother’s father, Samuel Walker, experienced the three days at Gettysburg and the siege of Petersburg, including the tragedy at the Crater.

Ulyss married Pearl Elmer Caine, a neighboring girl, when she was 18 around 1906.  (Pictured below in 1945.) He is listed in the 1910 census as a farmer.  Soon the children began to appear – Melton in 1908, Vena in 1909, Euhal in 1912 and Loudelle in 1914.  Some time in those years, the family left the farm and moved to the village of Fayette.  There Ulyss found employment in the local lumber mill.

Their world was rapidly changing – oil lamps were giving way to electric lights and horses to motorized carriages.  And 50 or so miles away by railroad, a ‘magic’ city, powered by coal, limestone, iron ore and northern capital, was growing rapidly offering economic opportunity and a way for a father to better support his four children.  So in 1917, this Holliman family moved to a suburb of Birmingham – Irondale -  a railroad switching yard for a growing number of freight and passenger trains that tied an emerging southern economy to a more financially robust America.

Before long, three additional children came along – Bishop in 1919, Virginia in 1922 and Ralph in 1925.  Pearl was 37 and Ulyss 41, when their family was complete.  Ulyss, good with his hands, took employment as a carpenter with the Birmingham Electric Company, a corporation which ran the municipal street car line.  When my grandfather was born, there were no street cars in Birmingham and when he died in 1965, there were no street cars.  But in between these technological eras, he worked 32 years repairing the wooden cars and supporting a family of nine persons.

That move from the land, where countless ancestors had toiled, to a newly industrialized urban area changed everything for my father’s generation.  As President Franklin Roosevelt remarked in the 1930s, this generation had a rendezvous with destiny, and so it was to be.

Continued soon to Part 2….

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 22

by Glenn N. Holliman

Letters from Home....

Of all the letters Bishop Holliman of Irondale, Alabama saved during World War II, there is only one written from his father, Ulyss S. Holliman (1884-1965) in the summer of 1942.  Ulyss was born in 1884 in Fayette County, Alabama, the last of six boys of John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930), a Confederate Civil War veteran who had excruciating war experiences.  (See earlier articles at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ .)

Below, Pearl Caine and Ulyss Holliman in 1949.  Pearl was 61 and Ulyss 65.

 

John Thomas and his second wife, Martha Jane Walker (mother of five of the six boys), worked a dirt-poor farm in the Hico community just south of Fayette, the county seat.  Ulyss must have toiled long and hard on the farm learning how to grow cotton, corn and vegetables.  In the 1910 census, Ulyss is recorded as a farmer.  By then he had married Pearl Caine (1888-1955) and they already had two children - Melton and Vena.  In 1912 and 1914, two more children came along - Euhal and Loudelle.

To support his growing family, Ulyss probably took a job with the local saw mill, as the family was then living in a small house, a few blocks south of the square in Fayette.  Sometime in the 1910s, John Thomas and Martha Jane ceased farming due to advancing age and moved to Fayette themselves.

Below, John Thomas and Martha Jane Walker Thomas in 1929, the year before John died. In the far right corner, back ground, dressed in his Sunday best, is Bishop Holliman.  This photograph was taken at the Holliman home in Fayette, Alabama.  John Thomas fought in seven Civil War battles, and Martha Jane's father, Samuel Walker, was at Gettysburg and surrendered with Lee's forces in Virginia during the last week of the war.

Wars change lives, and in or around 1917 in the economic expansion of World War I, Ulyss Holliman and his family joined his Caine family in-laws in moving to Irondale, Alabama, then a blue collar suburb of the rapidly growing city of Birmingham.  A skilled carpenter, Ulyss took a job with the Birmingham Electric Company repairing the mostly wooden street cars.  He held that employment until retirement in 1949.  Below, three trains cross at a busy intersection in downtown Birmingham ca 1940.

Below, Ulyss around 1924 in his plush Irondale garden at 2300 3rd Avenue North with his daughter, Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011).  One of Virginia's daughters, Susan Cornelius Williams, remembers her grandfather growing chrysanthemums and calling her 'Soosie'.

Ulyss needed the work, because the children kept coming - Bishop in 1919, Virginia in 1922 and Ralph in 1924.  Despite the long hours and no vacations until the middle 1930s, he managed a family garden and helped Pearl with the chickens.  We catch a glimpse of this life in his letter written the summer of 1942. Notice the names of several of his children are spelled incorrectly as his formal education ended in the 6th grade in a rural Alabama elementary school.

Oh me, what to make of a father who signs his letter to his son in the Navy with 'As Ever, U.S.Holliman'?  Ulysses Selman Holliman had a taciturn personality, perhaps copied from his father, who suffered evidently from post traumatic stress syndrome, a result of almost three years of  Civil War. Ulyss, tall and thin, did not smile much, could be contrary around grandchildren (I remember), was dependable, hard working and devoted to the Republican Party and the Tabernacle Church in Birmingham.  

Below from the Birmingham News in 1950, my grandfather, second from right, serves as elder of Bible Gospel Tabernacle.

I can still remember as a child gathering around his breakfast table in Irondale.  His blessings of the food were long, and in the background one sat through a sermon by Glenn Tingle, pioneer radio preacher, gasping for breath and fighting hell and and slinging damnation through the airwaves.  All the time Pearl (Grand Mama Holliman) calmly cooking, serving food and hugging her grandchildren.  

Below, Ulyss and Pearl in the autumn of 1942 in their yard in Irondale on 3rd Avenue, N.  Ulyss was 58 and Pearl 54 that year.

Ulyss also was ticklish!  He could not stand to be 'goosed'.  On one occasion riding home from work on a street car (as one can see in the street car picture above, they had large open air windows in pre-air conditioning days), an erstwhile friend (evidently brave, foolish or both) reached out and tickled Ulyss under his arms. 

Unfortunately, my grandfather was holding a package of grocery meat for the family. Surprised by the personal intrusion, Ulyss threw up his arms, and the beef went flying out the window, and was never recovered.  

My mother made the mistake of tickling him one time, and only one time, and he became furious! These tales were told many times through the decades over the family Thanksgiving table.

Next Training for War....

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