Edmund B. Holloman and his wife Mary Barrett were both born in
North Carolina during the turbulent times surrounding the
Revolutionary War, Edmund in 1773 and Mary in 1783. Edmund’s
parents were Thomas and Millie (Emeline/Amelia) Holloman and Mary’s
parents reportedly were Joseph and Winnie Barrett. Edmund and
Mary married in Raleigh, NC, in 1804 and their first son Allen W.
Holloman was born the first day of the following year. Around 1806 or
early 1807 Edmund moved his family to Tennessee, probably the part
of Hawkins County that later became Hancock County in northeastern
TN where some of Mary Barrett’s family most likely lived. In 1807 their
second child Abner S. Holloman was born in TN.
The Holloman couple did not stay in TN long for they migrated to
Missouri in 1810 with a wagon train that was led by a “Bent” or
“Ben” Counts, probably a son of Nicholas Counts of Grainger Co. TN.
Mary’s younger brother John S. Barrett and a number of their friends
joined the same wagon train. That wagon train probably formed in
northeastern Grainger County at Bean Station, TN, which was located
just south and west of two borders with Hawkins County. The group
most likely would have headed northwest toward the Wilderness Road
blazed in 1775 by Daniel Boone and would have followed that road
through the Cumberland Gap to Louisville, KY. At Louisville, they
would have turned west and pushed on to the Mississippi River where
they may have waited until the river froze solid in winter and made
an ice bridge for them to cross at either Ste. Genevieve or Cape
Girardeau, MO. Once on the western side of the river, the wagon train
headed inland into the Cape Girardeau district where these settlers
chose land to homestead. They quickly began to build shelters and to
prepare for spring planting.
Unfortunately, within a year after these settlers arrived, the first of
the great New Madrid earthquakes struck that region of the country.
This major series of earthquakes began in December of 1811 and
continued off and on until the largest one struck in February of 1812,
leaving the region devastated. The Hollomans and their neighbors
who had traveled from TN with their wagon train were so traumatized
by the quakes that most of them packed up their belongings in late
1812 and moved north to the New Tennessee Settlement in Ste.
Genevieve Co. where they once again established homesteads.
Edmund B. Holloman selected land for his homestead along the
Saline Creek near the present day community of Avon. There he and
his wife Mary settled down to farm and raise their children. Their
first two children, Allen W. and Abner S. Holloman, had been born
before the family arrived in MO. The next five children (John Barrett,
Elizabeth, Thomas Right, Mary Ann and Edmund Wesley Holloman)
were born between 1812 and 1825 on the Holloman homestead near
Avon.
Around 1832, Edmund established a new homestead some 10-15
miles north of Avon near his brother-in-law John S. Barrett. He built
a two-story house for his family on this new homestead located just
southwest of the present day town of Coffman. To help finance the
new home, Edmund sold part or possibly all of his homestead near
Avon to Aaron Counts, a new immigrant from Grainger Co. TN who
was likely a relative of Edmund’s old friend Bent Counts. About a
year or so later Edmund’s oldest son Allen established his own
homestead between his father’s new home and the homestead of his
father-in-law William Holmes, who lived just west of Coffman, MO.
The Hollomans, Holmes, Barretts and John S. Barrett’s in-laws the
Pattersons (James and the two men thought to be his sons, John and
Joseph Patterson) were all members of the local Methodist-Episcopal
conference and attended the worships led by their neighbor and
long-time friend the Rev. John McFarland who lived just east of John
S. Barrett. These families formed a close group of friends, hosting
church meetings in their homes and attending local revivals and
two-day camp meetings. When their Methodist-Episcopal conference
decided that a permanent meeting house should be built for their
district, they all supported the building of a stone Methodist meeting
house near the western edge of the Rev. John McFarland’s homestead.
This stone meeting house eventually become known as the Old Stone
Methodist Church and in the late 1840s trustees for that church were
Allan W. Holloman, Lorenzo Barrett Patterson, Benjamin M. Knox and
John Crane. Today all that is left of that stone meeting house is rubble
that has been made into a single wall and the cemetery that sat next
to it. Edmund B. Holloman died in Ste. Genevieve Co. in 1843 and
is thought to be buried in an unmarked grave in that Old Stone
Methodist Cemetery just outside Coffman, MO.
After Edmund’s death, his wife Mary and their children spent several
years settling his estate and sorting out their own lives. By 1849, Mary
and all of her children had decided to leave Ste. Genevieve Co. In
1846 Mary’s next to the youngest son Thomas Right Holloman had
married Rebecca Cook, the only child of a wealthy plantation owner in
Yazoo Co. Mississippi, and he had to take over management of the
plantation in 1848 when his father-in-law died. In 1849 Mary’s youngest
son Edmund Wesley Holloman had decided to join the Gold Rush to
California and left Missouri to seek his fortune in the west. That same
year, Mary and her other children moved to Arcadia, MO, where her
grandchildren could attend the academy newly opened by the Rev.
Jerome C. Berryman and her sons could run a steam mill they bought
from Rev. Berryman and his brother.
The large group of Holloman family members who moved to Arcadia
Valley consisted of Mary Holloman, her son Allen W. Holloman with his
wife and seven children, her son Abner S. Holloman with wife and three
children, her son John Barrett Holloman with wife and three children,
her youngest daughter Mary Ann Holloman and the four children of her
deceased eldest daughter Elizabeth Holloman Aikman. This large clan
of Hollomans lived in two adjacent houses that were about half a mile
south of Jerome C. Berryman’s school at the southern end of Arcadia
Valley. In the early 1850s Mary Holloman, her Aikman grandchildren
and her sons Abner S. and John B. along with their wives and children
all moved to Yazoo Co. MS, leaving her oldest son Allen and his family in
Arcadia, MO. Maryâs youngest daughter Mary Ann Holloman may have
gone temporarily to MS with this group or, more likely, remained in MO.
By 1855 Mary Ann had married a Missouri widower Joseph Carter
Hawkins and moved to his farm in Crawford Co. MO. Mary Barrett
Holloman, her Aikman grandchildren and her three sons Abner S.,
John B. and Thomas R. Holloman lived out their lives in Mississippi and
most are buried at the Wesley Chapel Methodist Church Cemetery in
the community of Phoenix, MS.
HOLLOMAN-BARRETT FAMILY GENEALOGY CHART
01 Edmund B. HOLLOMAN, b. 08-13-1773 in either NC;
d. 09-28-1843, Ste. Genevieve Co. MO
Father: Thomas HOLLOMAN,
b. VA/NC ca. 1835; d. abt. 1796, Wake Co. NC
Mother: Emiline “Milly” (Amelia?) Last-Name-Unk
she remarried Jesse Rowland 1804
Siblings: Lewis, Samuel, Benjamin, Telitha/Elitha and
probably Hardy Holloman
+ Mary BARRETT, b. 08-27-1783 Raliegh, NC;
d. 11-15-1858 Phoenix, Yazoo Co. MS; m. 1804 NC
Father: Joseph BARRETT, b. probably VA
Mother: Winnie Last-Name-Unk
02 Allan Wolford? (Woolford?/Wiliford?/Winifred?) HOLLOMAN,
b. 01-01-1805 in NC;
d. 05-05-1895, Iron Co. MO
+ m1. Rachel COUNTS, b. abt. 1807 in TN;
d. 01-28-1828, Ste. Genevieve Co. MO;
m. 01-15-1826 Ste. Genevieve Co. MO
+ m2. Lucinda Smith HOLMES,
b. 11-18-1812 in Ste. Genevieve Co. MO;
d. 01-08-1888 Iron Co. MO;
m. October, 1830;
02 Abner S. HOLLOMAN, b. 1807 in TN; d. 1863, Yazoo Co. MS
+ Parmelia/Pamela Hypotia DALE,
b. abt. 1822 in KY;
d. 1895 San Antonio, TX ?
m. 12-27-1838 in Barry Co. MO
02 John Barrett HOLLOMAN,
b. 11-26-1812 in Ste. Genevieve Co. MO,
d. 01-25-1895 in MS
+ Nancy Helen BRUFFEY,
b.12-17-1818 Potosi, MO;
d. 04-11-1904 Yazoo, MS;
m. 09-26-1839 (or ?09-26-1837?), Caledonia, MO
02 Elizabeth HOLLOMAN,
b. 08-25-1816 in Ste. Genevieve Co. MO;
d. 11-10-1845 in MO
+ William AIKMAN,
b. abt 1805;
d. aft. 1860;
m. 1838 Ste. Genevieve Co MO
02 Thomas Right HOLLOMAN,
b. 10-23-1818 in Ste. Genevieve Co. MO,
d. 11-19-1894 in MS
+ Rebecca Ann COOK,
b. 06-22-1829;
d. 05-21-1871 in MS,
m. 03-05/19-1846
+ Amanda MCKEE CURTIS, b. abt. 1842 MS
02 Mary Ann HOLLOMAN,
b. bet. 1820-1822 in Ste. Genevieve Co. MO;
d. 1896 in Yazoo Co. MS
+ Joseph Carter HAWKINS,
b. 1797 in Greenville Co., SC,;
d. 08-12-1860 in St. James, MO;
m. abt. 1854
+ Lea H. MILLER,
b. 1826 in TN;
d. 09-03-1892 MO;
m. 04-19-1866 MO
02 Edmund Wesley HOLLOMAN,
b. 02-05-1825 in Ste. Genevieve Co. MO;
d. 02-25-1879 CA
+ Matilda Ann HOOPER,
b. 04-02-1842 AR;
d. 07-1872 in CA;
m. 07-31-1864 in CA
Will of Edmund B. Holloman written in 1821 and filed in 1843 naming Mary
Barrett Holloman and John S. Barrett co-executors of his will.
