How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 29

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Allies Punch Back, and more Hollimans join the Fight

By the winter of 1943, the Axis tide  crested and began a slow retreat to eventual defeat.  The Japanese evacuated Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, a German army surrendered in Stalingrad (left photograph) and after a setback at Kasserine, the U.S. and British armies continued their punishment of  two German and Italian armies in North Africa.

In the States, more and more young men were called to the colors to man the tanks, airplanes and ships emerging from assembly lines.  Two of these serviceman that late winter and early spring were from the Holliman family of Irondale, Alabama  - W. Ralph Holliman (b 1924) and his brother-in-law, Walter Cornelius (1922-2006), husband of Virginia Holliman (1922-2011). 

Right, ca 1927, Irondale, Alabama, Pearl C. Holliman holds her youngest of four sons on her lap, Ralph.  To her left are Virginia, the later wife of Walter Cornelius, and Bishop Holliman, far left.  By the spring of 1943,  Ralph and Walter joined Bishop in the Armed Forces.  Pearl was thirty-nine years old when this picture was made. This photograph is courtesy of Susan Cornelius Williams, Virginia's younger daughter.

Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) wrote in January 1943 from 2300 3rd Street, North, Irondale to my father, Bishop Holliman, at his Navy radio training base in Casco Bay, Maine:



 "Well, I guess Dad and I will soon be in this big old house by ourselves.  It won't be long before Ralph (the youngest son) will be gone.  Every one that was in his class left last Saturday.  I know the Lord is able to take care of him, just like He has with you...."

In this letter and several others, my grandmother admonished my father to answer the letters of a girl in Philadelphia whom he had met and dated in the fall of 1942.  

 "I think you have treated  her rather bad, for I think they was nice to you and you should have showed your appreciation more than he have.  I do not know what to do, the girl thinks you have gone so please write her something.  You may go back there sometime, and what will she think about me?"

Left, the girl who finally caught Bishop Holliman!

That girl was my future mother, Geraldine S. Stansbery, an East Tennessee transplant living with her family in Philadelphia.  Short story is my father eventually did write 'Gerry' and in June 1945, their war romance blossomed into marriage.  By 1956, the couple had three children, and eventually eight grandchildren!

Below, the engagement photograph of Walter and Virginia Holliman Cornelius.  Walter would serve in the U.S. Army Air Corp during World War II and be stationed in Saipan in the Pacific.  Photo courtesy of Susan Cornelius Williams

 

Another marriage in the family....Later that winter, Pearl wrote that her youngest son, Ralph, would be leaving for Ft. McClellan, Alabama on March 26, 1943.  Born in 1924, and at age 19, he and his high school sweetheart, Motie Chism (1925-2003), tied the knot, a few weeks before Ralph shipped out.  That war time marriage lasted until Motie's death in 2003.  

Below in the 1980s, Gerry, Ralph and Motie Holliman.

Ralph wrote the week before his Army induction in March 1943 to his brother, Bishop: 

"I have been expecting it before now.  It will be pretty hard leaving everybody (his bride of two weeks), but I'm no better than anybody else.  I'm willing to go, and I am going to do the best that I can.  Motie and Mama are taking it pretty good so far but I dread the next few days.  If you don't mind, drop them an encouraging note."

A few weeks later, now in the Army, Ralph wrote again with a bit of dry humor that the family knows and loves:   

"When I left home, I left everyone crying.  They'll get over it thought.  I think I kissed everyone goodbye except the dog.  He might have been in the bunch too!"

In addition to a war time marriage that spring, Pearl's oldest daughter, Vena Holliman Daly (1909-1990), was expecting her second child.  Her husband, Robert W. Daly (1901-1959), wrote to Bishop: 

"Vena is about two months pregnant and under the care of Dr.  Nufield, the baby specialist.  She has been pretty sick at times, but he believes he can stop this. We could not hardly think of Mary not having an older brother or sister later in life when we were old or gone." 

Vena Holliman Daly (1909-1990) taken around 1926, a school girl who favored her mother.

The baby born in October 1943 was Robert W. Daly, Jr., now a retired biology professor from the University of North Alabama and father of three children, John, Suzanne and Iris, and numerous grandchildren.   

Below, Bob Daly, ca 1946 in Irondale. Photo courtesy of Susan Cornelius Williams.  Also decades later in November 2013 at the home of this blog writer, Bob, wearing more clothes on a cold autumn evening in Pennsylvania, pays a visit, while yours truly pets a black cat. 

Next Posting, more of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Family during World War II....
 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.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.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.

E.C. Herrin, Jr., a Celebration in Words

by Glenn N. Holliman

Alabama and this family lost a good man last week.  Elliott Clayton (E.C.) Herrin, Jr. (1930-2015) who married my first cousin, Mary Daly in 1951, served his community, church and family as would become a Southern gentlemen.  He died of complications of heart disease and aging.

In 2010, with my retirement, I was able to sit down with Mary and E.C. in their home, and discuss family history, picking their memories of their growing up in a different Alabama, and learning more about Irondale, my aunts and uncles and their own stories. Later I posted an article on E.C. at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/, a May 16, 2011 article.

 Below, the 1951 wedding of Mary Daly and E.C.Herrin

E.C. was always kind and patient with me, perhaps because we could talk politics, books and history.  E.C. and my Father, Bishop Holliman, had a teasing relationship, kidding about this or that and bringing forth the humorous, dry humor both had in abundance.

 Left, E.C. and Bishop Holliman share a beverage and jests in 1989 while on a trip to Ireland  with Mary and Virginia Cornelius.
 



Right, E.C. in 1972 at one of many wedding receptions.

The picture below I took in 1970 at a family reunion at Mary and E.C.'s home, a home they opened countless times to Dalys, Herrins, Hollimans, Ferrells, Cornelius and other associated families.  This is one of my favorite photos of E.C., catching a bit of bemusement and wisdom in his expression.

At his funeral on April 14, 2015, his four children spoke, all eloquently - Clayton, Linda, Suzanne and David.  I will let Linda Herrin Bradley's loving biography of her Father speak for all of them.

"Daddy was an amazing man. His parents were hard workers in the 1930’s and he learned well from them. When he was 12 years old, his Mother died from breast cancer. Since Daddy had no brothers or sisters, his Father took him to live temporarily with his Mother’s sister and their 5 children, but 3 months later his Father was killed in a car accident. 

After that Daddy always worked to support himself – starting with a paper route on his bicycle, and later at Sears Roebuck as he put himself through college. He was working for TCI when they told he would be transferred to Pittsburgh, and he needed to take metallurgy classes. Daddy said if he was going back to school it would be law school, so he did. His cousin, our Aunt Lola, gave him $100 to start his tuition, because his Mother had given her $100 years before so she could go to business school. So for 5 years Daddy worked all day, then went to law school at night, with 3 children and 1 on the way. But he never complained and he loved every minute of his work, for 50 years, as a lawyer and a municipal judge.

Then in 1989, Daddy started losing his eyesight to macular degeneration. Gone were the books he so loved to read, but thankfully he had books on tape to help. Mother became his eyes – driving, reading, writing, and sitting by him as a judge – so justice truly was blind. Most people didn’t know he couldn’t see, because he managed and again, never complained. 

Mother and Daddy married 64 years ago this June, and Daddy would always say they were still trying to work it out. When Mother went to work for him in 1972, we thought divorce was eminent! But Daddy said they couldn’t divorce because they couldn’t agree on who had take the kids. Daddy would grin and say his list started with his books, hunting rifles, the dog, the car – he laughed and said we were way down on his list!

In the past few years, Daddy’s health really started to decline. But still, even to the end, he managed and he never complained. 

I used to get upset when I was growing up about whatever little stuff was happening to me, and I would tell Daddy “it’s not fair.” Daddy would always say, “I can promise you a lot of things, but I never promised you fair.” Certainly a lot of things in his life weren’t fair, but he never complained and you would never know about it.

Daddy has always been there, to encourage us, to help us learn from our mistakes, to wipe away our tears, to tell us to be careful when we would leave, and to tell us he loved us and how proud he was of us. His only regret was that his parents were not able to know us. He slept well every night – because he said he had a 'clear conscience'.  And he did." - Linda Herrin Bradley

May Mary, their children and grandchildren be comforted by the example E.C. Herrin's life has set for us all. - GNH

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 28

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Winter of 1943....

Below, H. Bishop Holliman of Irondale, Alabama at the Bunker Hill Monument, winter of 1943, while on a weekend pass from his Naval base in Maine.

 January 1943, my father, H. Bishop Holliman, was assigned to the U.S. Navy radio school in Casco Bay, Maine, an island near Portland.  Until May 1943, he was instructed in Morse code but also introduced to one of the secrets of World War II - the ability to listen to German U-boats radio signals and obtain an accurate bearing on their locations.  

That bitter winter of 1943, German submarines were inflicting havoc on North Atlantic shipping as convoy after convoy was devastated by the deployment of over 100 U-boats.  Unless the Allies could stop this destruction there could be no Allied invasion of the European mainland in 1944.

Below, a U-Boat under air attack.  

"The program at Casco was called High Frequency Direction Finding (HF/DF) to detect when Germans subs sent out signals to other subs.  This was a highly classified, secretive operation, and we were sworn to secrecy.  Even the scrap paper at the end of the day's school would be burned under supervision.  We could not tell anyone about what were were studying or what we would do.  

We were learning to detect the German code signals the U-boats sent out when they spotted a convoy of allied ships.  The operation I learned later was highly instrumental in wiping out the threat posed by the submarines up to that time.  

When home in Irondale, I recall evading my Daddy's questions about the nature of the school.  We were admonished to say nothing - tell no one - of what we were doing.  If the Germans discovered we'd stolen their secrets, why, the whole war would be lost!" 

Historians report that the winter of 1942/43 was the high tide of German successes at sea.  By the late spring, a combination of HF/DF, more destroyer escorts and importantly, air coverage from escort carriers, led to the demise of the threat.  The Germans began to lose more submarines than ships sunk by the summer of 1943, just in time for the Allies to launch the Invasion of Sicily.

 Admiral Carl Doenitz, the U-boat genius, at the head of a naval inspection force.

For additional information on Casco Bay Naval Station during World War II, please go to this link:
http://www.navyhistory.org/2014/05/going-ashore-naval-operations-in-casco-bay-during-world-war-ii-part-i/


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.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.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.

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 27

by Glenn N. Holliman

A World War II Train Ride and Another in 1989....

In January 1943, while waiting assignment to a radio school in Maine, my father, H. Bishop Holliman, was granted seven days leave from his destroyer, the USS Barker DD-213, then tied up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

 In his 1988 hand written memoirs, he wrote of rushing to his Irondale, Alabama home by train.  Recently he expanded his story of that twenty hour train ride in which he shared a coach seat with a little girl from Brooklyn. He entitled the article 'The Girl from Brooklyn' which he sold for $25 to the Good Old Days magazine.  After decades of writing, this is his first payment ever for a published article.   You can find the expanded story in thus month's publication, the cover of which is pictured below. Not bad for a 95 year old!

 In case you can't find a copy at your newstand or on line, from his memoirs, we have this:

"One experience I recall.  In New York, a young girl and her mother were in the coach I was in.  The girl sat by me and her mother in front of us.  All the time I thought the girl was 14 or 15 (I was 23 at the time).  Just before getting to Birmingham, the girl went back to the ladies room and soon reappeared and was an 18 year old beauty.  She had passed for a child to save on fare.  She and I laughed about 'lost opportunities' and I wanted to bang my head against the side of the train."

Alas, my father also failed to obtain her phone number!  But that is my Dad....

After his leave was up, he was off to the Navy Station at Cosco Bay, Maine for five months, but that is another story.

The 1989 Excursion

My father has had always a love of trains and with the collapse of the passenger train after World war II, he had precious few times to indulge his passion.  However, in 1989 the opportunity came to travel on an excusion from Birmingham to Chattanooga.  Several of the children of his niece, Mary Daly Herrin, traveled with him. Here he sits with his great-nephew David Herrin, forty-five years after the train ride with the pretty girl from Brooklyn.

 

Clayton Herrin, brother of David, and son of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin, took pictures from the train that day as did Mary from the ground when the train rolled through Irondale headed north.  Here are a few phtographs of that April day in 1989.

Mary Herrin took the first picture as the train roaring through Irondale.  The second picture, Clayton took from the train window looking toward the Irondale Cafe and the VFW Hall.  The store fronts of Irondale have changed a bit in the past quarter century.

Below, Bishop and his great niece and nephew, Phyllis and Clayton Herrin in April 1989.
 

 The train drives north in these two dramatic pictures.

Next posting, more of World War II and perhaps some more pictures of the Alabama family after the War.

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.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.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.

Christmas 1950

by Glenn N. Holliman

Let us raise a toast and a prayer for parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents this Holy Season.  This picture was taken in 1950, 64 years ago, at 2300 3rd Avenue North, Irondale, Alabama in the home of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman.  This picture is from Charles H. Ferrell, first born of The Rev. Charles T. and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell and the second born grandson of Ulyss and Pearl.

 Ralph and Bishop, ages 90 and 95, are still with us, but we have lost Vena Holliman Daly (1909-1990), Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011), Ulyss (1884-1965), Pearl (1887-1955) and Loudelle (1916-1998).  The back row right are Melton (1908-1958) and Euhal (1912-1989).

We salute them all and give thanks for the gift of life they have handed off to new generations.  Note behind Ralph's head is a picture of Virginia, now in the procession of one of her daughters, Susan, with an insert picture of Walter Cornelius in his World War II uniform. - GNH, son of Bishop

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.