by Rocky Macy
Delana HOLMAN was born on March 11, 1814. She married William MARTIN on January 29, 1832, in Fayetteville, Lincoln County, Tennessee. Delana passed away at the age of seventy-two on January 30, 1887, in Newton County, Missouri.
Delana HOLMAN was my g-g-g-grandmother.
The names of Delana's HOLMAN's parents are currently unknown. Her dates of birth and death are established by her tombstone in New Salem Cemetery in Newton County, Missouri. The place of her birth was probably Tennessee. That information was given on the US Census records for 1850, 1860, and 1880, as well as on the Kansas State Census of 1865. The “Find a Grave” site on the internet lists her place of birth as North Carolina, a point of origin that was common for many early settlers of Tennessee, but that information would have been provided by a descendant who likely did not have any first hand knowledge of where Delana was born.
The 1870 US Census, however, points in an entirely different direction – south. In that census, based on information that was likely provided by her, Delana’s place of birth was noted as Alabama. Lincoln County, Tennessee, the place where Delana and William were married when she was seventeen, sits along the southern edge of Tennessee and shares a long border with Alabama. Unless the census takers in Missouri and Kansas were very careful in asking where she was born, the answer could have been rolled in with William’s and been something like “We’re from Tennessee.”
Today a “Holman Cemetery” still exists in Lincoln County, Tennessee, and an internet search revealed that there are still families with that surname living in the county.
William MARTIN’s parents, Abraham and Mourning BIGGS MARTIN, migrated to Missouri from Tennessee in 1843 (see “Goodspeed’s 1888 History of McDonald and Newton Counties,” page 384). William’s younger brother, Hezekiah MARTIN, who provided the family information for the “Goodspeed’s” biography arrived in Missouri from Tennessee the following year in 1844. It is therefore likely that William and Delana and their two oldest children, Adam and Harriett, came to Missouri in the early 1840’s. In fact, census entries indicate that Harriett was born in Tennessee (around 1841) and the next oldest sibling, Hezekiah M., was born in Missouri in 1844.
Delana gave birth to six children: Adam (born in 1836), Harriett (1841-1900), Hezekiah M. (1844), William (1847), Mourning Rebecca (1849), and Julia Ann (1852-1928). Of those, Harriett was married twice, first to Nathan M. WILSON, and then when he died to William HOCKERSMITH, Hezekiah married Talitha Ann BIGGS, and Julia Ann married Eugene Marshall Stanley PRITCHARD.
William and Delana and their family remained in Newton County, Missouri, until the Civil War broke out. In January of 1862 William, who was forty-nine-years-old with a wife and six children – two of whom were by then adults – enlisted as a Private in the Union Army at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He served primarily as an infantryman (foot soldier) in the 6th Kansas Cavalry, a command which fought along the Missouri-Kansas border and down into Arkansas.
When the war ended in 1865, William and Delana were living in Franklin County, Kansas, along with their three youngest children: William, Mourning, and Julia, They were residents of Franklin County on September 2, 1865, when the Kansas State Census was taken. William’s younger brother, James S. MARTIN, and his family were living in the next household listed on that census.
Sometime between the time that the Kansas State Census in 1865 and the US Census in 1870, William and Delana returned to Newton County, Missouri, where they spent the remainder of their lives as residents of the township of Neosho. Their daughter, Harriett, a recent widow, and five of her children were living with them when the 1880 census was taken.
Delana passed away on January 30, 1887, preceding her husband in death by three-and-a-half years. At least two of her grown children, Harriett and Julia Ann, were living close by with their families at the time of Delana’s death. She was buried at New Salem Cemetery in rural Newton County, and William joined her there a few years later. Today their tombstones are still legible, along with those of many of their neighbors, relatives, and descendants who are also at rest in New Salem – very near the place where those original wagons from Tennessee finally stopped rolling almost two hundred years ago.
1 comment:
Was William at the Battle of Westport?
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