My Adema Cousins - Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

                                         The scene from the Lake Erie cottage of the Adema family in Canada not far from Niagara Falls

This past July, my wife, Barbara, and I once again visited the Lake Erie cottage of Bob and Gay Adema. Bob and I share common maternal great grandparents, George Washington and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940). Frankie was with her father, Isaac Wilson (1822-1864) when he was cruelly bushwhacked and killed on his farm in Ashe County, North Carolina, yet another victim of the Civil War.

Left to right, Barb, Gayle, Rob and Bob. Rob Adema, son of Bob and Gayle, makes his home in Buffalo, New York, where Adema families have lived since the late 1800s, immigrating from Holland.

My wife, Barb, whose maiden name is Long, is also a native of the Buffalo area, having been born and raised in Lockport, New York.

Bob' mother, Gladys Osborne Adema (1913 - 2003) and my mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015) were first cousins.

Gladys was the daughter of Bascom(b) and Doris Kruger Osborne (1891-1923).  In earlier blogs, I have told the story of the untimely death of Doris at age 32, the mother of three young children - Bacomb, Doris and Gladys Osborne.

While together, Bob and Rob pulled out some family artifacts and photographs.  Here are some we examined.

Right in 1937 are Bob's parents, Howard M. (1909-1984) and Gladys Osborne Adema at Niagara Falls. Howard had met Gladys in Damascus, Virginia while working with the Civilian Conservation Corp during the middle 1930s as part of President Franklin  Roosevelt's New Deal.  After that service, Howard returned to Buffalo, NY with his new bride and entered the family heating and furnace business.

Left, the first child of Howard and Gladys, Margaret 'Peg"Adema Noeltner, held in 1937 by her grandmother Amelia Margaret "Millie" Berkhausen Adema, b 1874. 

After the birth of Bob,  Alan Adema,was born in  in Buffalo, Howard and Gladys third child.  Below right in 1951, Alan on his sister's Peg's shoulders, next to their grandfather, Bascomb Osborne at Niagara Falls.

Below left, Howard and Gladys Osborne Adema as newly weds in the middle 1930s.

Next Posting, more on the Adema cousins!

For additional information on Stansbery, Wilson, Greer, Osborne, Adema, Hollimans, Boones, Wilcoxsons and many associated families, please visit www.bholliman.com, a virtual archive of manuscripts and records of these families.

Reflections of The Rev. William A. Wilson

by Glenn N. Holliman

Additional Memoirs by an Amazing Ancestor....

The Rev. William Albert Wilson, 1861-1951, a minister of the Gospel, a scholar, a writer, a man of integrity. Family tradition is that this photograph was taken in the field where his father was shot in 1864 in Sutherland, North Carolina.  A Southern Methodist Church minister, he served forty years as a missionary to Japan from 1890-1930.

Years ago, I wrote in this space of the book Neighbor to Neighbor published in 2007 by the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. This work largely concerns William A. Wilson (1861-1951) telling of the bushwhacking of my great, great grandfather Isaac Wilson (1822-1864) of Sutherland, Ashe County, NC in June 1864. The Civil War borderland unrest and violence between pro-union residents of East Tennessee and pro-Confederate residents of Western North Carolina was vividly played out by the ambush slaying of Isaac by his neighbors.  Isaac was a lieutenant home on leave from the Confederate Army.

This horrible event was witnessed by my great grandmother, Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940), who was with him in that cornfield.  She orally passed this traumatic memory along to her grandchild, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015), my mother. As a child living in Johnson City, Tennessee in the 1950s, I vividly remember my mother telling me this awful story. 

Her interpretation, which varies from Will's, had her great grandfather, Isaac, observing a band of 'guerrillas', irregular Union men, approaching his fields.  He sent Frankie, my 13 year old great grandmother, back to the farm house while he confronted the armed men on horseback. While she ran to the house, her father was shot and killed.

With the advent of the internet and in my retirement years, I discovered William A. Wilson's version of the bushwhacking on the Johnson County, Tennessee history web site.  To my amazement additional research found the story in the Appalachian Journal, Fall 2006, a publication of the Center for Appalachian Studies.  Later I  discovered and purchased a copy of Neighbor to Neighbor, an even fuller description of the horrid event by William A. Wilson, who was only three years old at the time of the tragedy.

The 2006, Fall Applachian Journal with considerable material on the Isaac and William A. Wilson families.

Upon his retirement as a Southern Methodist Church missionary in Japan in 1930, my great great Uncle Will, collected numerous memories of the 1864 tragedy, typed it up by 1940 and put it away, only to have descendants make it available to scholars two generations later.  This was the nucleus of Neighbor to Neighbor.

There must have been a bit of the writing bug in the family.  Will was very well educated for the time and place in which he found himself.  Whereas Will matriculated at Trinity College (now Duke University), Frankie, one of his older sisters, had her limited schooling interrupted by the War. She married at age 15 to George Washington Osborne, and together they had numerous children, the last one being my grandmother, Mayme Osborne Stansbery (1896-1943).  


Frankie left a diary begun in 1914 which continued until a month before her death in Bristol, Tennessee in 1940.  Her spelling was 'the way she talked', irregular and in the vernacular of the mountains.  When I found the diary in 2009, I was entranced and taken into a world of relatives and events previously unknown to me.  Frankie in the 1930s, right.

For several years, I transcribed it, trying to understand who the persons were, relatives I had never known.  I discovered my Ashe County ancestors, and came to appreciate the part played by the Greers, Wilsons, Boones, Wilcoxsons and others in the construction of not just my DNA but also values that helped form my life.  

This journal can be found at www.bholliman.com/ in the Record's section.  Place in the Search bar the title - Diary of Frances Wilson Osborne, 1914-1940 and click.  It took time to upload so it will take time to download - over 100 pages.

In 2011 with the diary 'translated', I felt it should be preserved and not tossed out by some descendant of mine in some future generation, so I donated it the Center for Appalachian Studies at ASU.  While there I met historians who passed along to me a copy of additional memoirs by The Rev. William A. Wilson, material too expansive for the 2006 Journal and 2007 Neighbor to Neighbor.  I quickly reviewed the 110 pages or so, and filed it in my genealogical papers.  These memoirs are entitled Reflections of The Rev. William Albert Wilson.

There has been more than enough material to keep me busy writing in this blog space, trying to capture stories of my maternal ancestors. Recently, worrying about the mass of family manuscripts entrusted to me, I created a virtual archive at www.bholliman.com, a place for the storage, hopefully for generations, of family materials that in previous decades would have remained hidden in attic or even worse tossed to a garbage pail.  I remembered Will's additional memoirs, which covered in detail his work in Japan and his voyages to and from this Asian nation, and wanted to make them available to all.

I emailed Michael Ignelzi, a great grandson of Will, and with his encouragement scanned the manuscript and uploaded it to the aforementioned web site.  I broke it into 19 sections for ease of both up and downloading.  This manuscript which covers years and family from 1890 to 1930 is now available at no cost.  

Just go to the Records page, find the 'search' bar, key in Reflections of  The Rev. William A. Wilson or even just the name "Wilson", and the work will be available for downloading to one's computer.  This is a 1980 typed and privately printed manuscript saved by his grandchildren to whom I am very grateful.

In future posts, I plan to analyze this marvelous gift from the past and share some insights. William Albert Wilson was a man of God, dedicated to sharing the Gospel in Asia.  He was steadfast in his difficult work and a man of integrity and high intelligence.  I encourage my relatives and historians to visit this document and discover the good work to which Will gave his life.

The Wilson Cemetery in Sutherland, North Carolina where William A. Wilson and his parents are buried.


A Special Note from Michael Ignelzi, great grandson of William A. Wilson -  Michael reports that cousin Ruth Duncan of Sutherland has been insuring that the Wilson Cemetery is mowed numerous times each summer.  The cost of this is approximately $350.00 a year.  The Ignelzi family contributed to this effort this summer, and invite all of us cousins to assist in maintaining this important part of our past.  Checks can be sent to Mrs. Ruth Duncan, 21861 NC Highway 88 West, Zionville NC 28968-9561. Thank you. - GNH

The virtual archive can be found at www.bholliman.com/ .

Who are our Wilson Ancestors?

by Glenn N. Holliman

"The more I know of my maternal ancestors, the more I realize they moved the frontier forward before the American Revolutionary War.  They fought the Native Americans, the French, Tories, the British twice and then in the Civil War, their neighbors.  They were one feisty bunch! - GNH

Below the writer in Boone, 
North Carolina on the beautiful campus of Appalachia State University
Five years ago, I began writing this blog on my maternal ancestors.  My mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, died this past July 12, 2015. Before she slipped into dementia, she and I, along with my two sisters and a nephew were able to make a trip to Damascus, Virginia, Bristol, Tennessee and Sutherland, North Carolina to visit ancestral sites.  Later my son and grand daughter made the trip to Sutherland.
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As a child, my mother had told me of her grandmother, Frances Wilson Osborne, walking behind her father in his Ashe County, NC corn field during the Civil War.  It was a chilling tale of a young 13 year old girl, born 1851, who witnessed her father, Isaac Wilson (1822-1864) shot in the back from ambush by neighboring Union sympathizing bushwhackers.

Decades later, I found the story on the Internet and in the book Neighbor to Neighbor, largely written by Frankie's brother, The Rev. William Albert Wilson (1861-1950).  About Uncle Will and Great Grandmother Frankie, I have written many times in this space, and I hope to do so more in the future.

But for now, I wanted to share more information on our Wilson line.  July 1, 2010 on this blog site, I wrote what I knew at the time of Isaac Wilson and his lineage; that is to say very little about his own grandfather and line before the middle 1700s.   (One can go to the Blog Archive, bottom left column, to retrieve the 2010 article.)

Several years ago, I did visit the Appalachian State University archives to research the Wilson line.  Here are my findings, basically 'raw data', inconclusive but intriguing.  Perhaps this will encourage someone reading these words to dig deeper and help connect the dots.

First a snip-it from Ancestry.com on my Wilson very great grandparents.  Isaac's father, Hiram, appears in Neighbor to Neighbor, a grandparent to my great grandmother, Frankie, who greatly assisted his daughter-in-law Caroline Greer Wilson, when her husband was murdered.

According to my great grandmother's notes, Hiram's father was John Wilson (1749-1812) and his father was Charles Wilson (1733-1781) who died of wounds after the Battle of Guildford Courthouse.  The dates of  Charles and John's births are a bit suspicious but could be accurate.

But what do we know of their lives?  The data below might help.

In the ASU Center for Appalachian Studies is a volume, the Marriages of Rowan County, NC, 1753-1868, compiled by Brent H. Holcomb, Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1981. I found: 

 -P. 144, John Wilson, bondsman for Frost, John and Rebecca Boon 23 Aug 1793.
- P. 271, John Wilson, bondsman for Mealy, John and Mary Linn, 20 March 1797.
- P. 341 John Wilson, bondsman for Roark, William and Margret Rose, 25 Nov 1768.

Hmmm...if this our John Wilson who witnessed these marriages?  Notice the marriage of Rebecca Boon; perhaps a first cousin?  There is much more on John Wilson.

Next I looked into the multi-volume Journal of the Rowan County Genealogical Society,  1989.

Vol. 3
- P. 61, Marriage deed between John Wilson and Sarah Boone April 1782. Same page Benjn Wilson m. to Margret Bowman on 12/30/1788.  This John and Sarah would be Isaac Wilson grandparents, or my generation's fourth great grandparents.  

- P. 97, Alexander Wilson m. Jean Brandon on 2/11/1778. James Wilson m. Hannah Bryant on 9/1/1783. Was James Wilson a brother of John Wilson?  Notice the Bryant connection.  Daniel Boone, this writer's sixth great uncle, married Rebecca Bryan.

- P. 112 one Elizabeth Wilson, b 1754 and d 1825 was second wife of Wm. Frost, who bore him 14 children.

- P. 133, James Wilson m. Jean Caldwell on 5/6/1788.  Is this the widower of Hannah Bryant above?

Vol. 4 

- P. 107, Elizabeth Wilson m. David Enochs 1/29/1794.  Oh me, is this the same Elizabeth as above or a different Wilson?

- P. 113 John Wilson and Sarah Smith witnessed a Jacob Wiseman deed. Notice in the snip-it above the close relationship between Wilson and Smith families.

Vol. 5

- P.  85 Katherine Wilson m. Joseph Hall,8/7/1788  and Elizabeth Wilson m. Wm. Hall 1/7/1783.

- P. 111, Elizabeth Wilson m. Joseph Holman 4/12/1768.  Yet more Elizabeth Wilson marriages.

- P. 113 Samuel Wilson m. Margaret Jack on 4/6/1768.

- P. 119, one Capt. Wilson listed on 1778 list in Second Creek area.  This may very well have been Charles Wilson, John's father, and my 5th great grandfather.

Vol. 6

- P. 19, John Wilson m Marey Kimsey on 2/24/1769.

Below the lovely campus high in the western North Carolina highlands, a college serving the community and nation.

Now with these nuggets of information, and so many overlapping Wilsons, let us step back a generation.  In The Rowan Story by James S. Brawley, 1953, Salisbury, NC, Rowan Printing Co., we find on page 357 a listing of a Charles Wilson as a taxable in Rowan County in 1759.  Salisbury was county seat.  Catawa Indians lived in and around Rowan.  Cherokees lived more to the west.

I propose this is the father of John Wilson and grandfather of Hiram.

On page 18 is another ancestor.  Squire Boone in 1754 appointed one of the commissioners.  Indians wars in 1760s reduced the taxables.  Squire is my generation's 7th great grandfather.

Below the library and Appalachian archives at ASU in Boone, North Carolina, 3,300 feet above sea level with cold winters and moderate summers.

So let us take a look at the Rowan County, NC Tax Lists 1757-1800 by Jo White Linn, 1995.

- P. 35, 1759, Charles Wilson listed as one taxable.

- P. 53, 1761 tax list has Charles Wilson.

- P. 76, 1768 tax list – 2 taxables for Charles Wilson.

- P. 120, Charles Wilson and John Wilson listed in 1772 Rowan Co. tax list as well as James Wilson and son and two Negroes – 4 taxables. 

- P. 211, 1783 Charles Wilson has 200 acres, valued at 75 pds.  Uh oh... Hmmm…this can’t be Charles Wilson who died at Guildford Ct. House in 1780!  Is this a son, another Charles Wilson, a brother of John, my generation's 4th great grandfather.

On my to-do list is to return some day to this fabulous archive filled with information on my frontier ancestors.  My thesis is Charles Wilson migrated, probably from Pennsylvania, possibly a neighbor of the Boones and Wilcoxsons, who like thousands were migrating south by the 1750s, moving to cheaper and abundant land in North Carolina.  The Shenadoah Trail, now I-81 was a busy road, but not much more than a wagon path in the middle 1700s.  

I hope the above helps other researchers, and encourage all to share information and theories with us.   

All are invited to join in building a family tree at Wilson-Greer-Osborne-Forrester-Donnelly and Associated Families of Western NC at Ancestry.com.  Just write to glennhistory@gmail.com for an invitation.  Saving our family history one ancestor at a time.  Thanks!

Louise Stansbery's Great Adventure, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

My cousin, Donna Sherwood, passed along to me a large box of memorabilia of my late Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood.  Donna's husband, Vance R. Sherwood, Jr. is my first cousin.  In a container inside the larger box, I found envelopes of photographs and souvenirs from a special period in my aunt's life.  It is a delight to share this bit of Americana with the larger family and world.

Frances Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006) lived a long and gentle life as a housewife in Knoxville, Tennessee.  She is a maternal aunt of mine,  the grand daughter of G.W. (1847 - 1927) and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940). Although known as Louise throughout her life, the Frances comes from her grandmother and her great, great grandmother, Frances Brown Greer, the Civil War heroine who stood off the Union patrol that were stealing her honey pot.  There was even Franklin Brown, the father of Frances Brown.

In 1918, she attended as a child of three the Wilson Reunion held on the Ashe County, North Carolina farm where her great grandfather, Isaac Wilson (1822-1864), had been killed just 55 years earlier near the North Fork of the New River in Sutherland.  Again a debt to Shirley Sorrell who identified the children in this picture.

Louise is on the front row, far right while an older cousin, behind her, Agnes Wilson, holds Louise's new born brother, Charles Stansbery, Jr.

Left, front row, left to right - Ernest, Clyde and Boyd Wilson, sons of Bessie and Arlie Gaither Wilson; Earl Wilson, son of Conley who is a son of John W. Wilson; Louise and Charles Stansbery, children of Mayme Osborne, the daughter of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne.


Back row, left to right - Thomas Earl Donnelly, who died at age 5.  He is the son of Mayme and Thomas Earl Donnelly.  Marie and Argus Wilson, children of Conley Wilson who is a son of John W. Wilson;  Robert Wilson, a son of John W. Wilson (Robert is the only grandchild of Issac and Caroline Greer Wilson in this picture); Dorothy and Agnes Wilson, the daughters of The Rev. William A. Wilson and Mary A. McClellan, who were Methodist missionaries to Japan.  Notice that almost all the children are bare footed!

Louise, the daughter of Charles S. and Mayme Torrence Osborne Stansbery (1896-1947), although born in Afton, Tennessee, grew up in Bristol, Tennessee, a mountain or two west of her mother's roots in Sutherland, Ashe County, North Carolina.  Louise's parents separated in 1930, and she went to work immediately after high school graduation in 1933 in the depths of the Great Depression.  Her jobs were retail clerk at Kress's and later waitress at King's Department Store.  Times were very hard for the family, and her small pay check kept her disabled mother, younger sister and brother in groceries.  Below, the beauty pageant announcement.

Then in January 1935, her life took a turn that led to  a larger world.  She had been blessed with good looks and a winning personality.  She was encouraged to participate in the Miss Bristol, Tennessee beauty pageant, and she won!  There was a preliminary contest on January 23, 1935 and then the finals on January 29.  The picture below appeared in the Bristol newspaper.

The newspaper clipping of the time states she would vie for Miss United States at Atlantic City.  The family has no oral history or memorabilia of such as contest, but she did attract the attention of the local radio station, WOPI that was looking for a beauty contestant for the annual International Radio Club conference.  The business gathering in 1935 was to be held in Miami, Florida and Havana, Cuba. 

Founded by W. A. Wilson (no relation to our Ashe County family), the station went on the air in 1929, the first air castle between Roanoke, Virginia and Knoxville, Tennessee.   Wilson was a good promoter; WOPI stood for 'Watch Our Popularity Grow' according the web site, http://www.wopi.com/history.html.  The original format was popular and mountain music.  Today WOPI, many owners later, is largely a sports station.

  Below, a post card Louise saved of the Cuban trip showing the early WOPI.

Below, one of the early announcers for WOPI was Tennessee Ernie Ford who was a Stansbery neighbor and fellow member of Bristol's Anderson Street Methodist Church in the 1930s. Ernest sang in the church choir and was a classmate with Louise's brother, Charles.  With the popular entertainer from the 1950s and 60s is W.A. Wilson in a photograph from the WOPI web site.  Mr. Wilson (1896-1967) and others would accompany Louise to Cuba and back.

With radio in its infancy, local station owners branded together in the International Radio Club, a trade organization run by one Jack Rice, an entrepreneur of his day.  The purpose of the 'club' was to promote radio and the sharing of ideas. 

There was an annual convention and in December 1935, that convention was held in both Miami, Florida and Havana, Cuba.   Below in Havana in December 1937 is Jack Rice, an aggressive promoter, who dreamed up the idea of a beauty pageant for the IRC as a way to attract attention and capture some publicity. 

When all said and done, 24 local broadcasters (there were about 65 members that year) tapped 'pageant queens' and paid their expenses to Havana.  For Bristol, Tennessee, the participant was the small town dime store clerk, my Aunt Louise, and she embarked on the great adventure of your young and to that date, sheltered life!

Next on to Florida and Cuba!