My Adema Cousins - Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

Recently while sojourning in the warmth of a February Florida, my wife, Barb, and I stopped and visited my cousins, the Bob Ademas.  You may recall I wrote of the Ademas, my 2nd cousin, through the George W. (1844-1928) and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940) line; these two persons are great grandparents of both Bob Adema and myself.

Below, Bob and Gayle Adema in Brandenton.  The photographer in the mirror is yours truly.

This time in what is becoming a twice annual meeting, we met Bob and Gayle's daughter and son-in-law, Vicki Adema McIntyre and her husband, Todd McIntyre.  Below, Vicki, Todd and Barbara Holliman.

Vicki for many years was with the Ringing Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, in charge of ordering feed for the many animals, and especially the elephants.  With the closing of the circus, she is now taking some time off before her next adventure.  Todd is writing a book on chemicals we may not know we are ingesting or inhaling in our 21st Century lives.

Below, Bob holds a picture of his mother, Vicki's grandmother, Gladys Osborne Adema (1913-2003) who lived in Damascus, Virginia.  Gladys met and married Bob's father, Howard Adema (1909-1984), who was working in the 1930s for the Civilian Conservation Corp in Virginia, but whose hometown was Buffalo, New York.

During our meeting this year, I remembered discovering a photograph of Gladys when she visited my Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006), a grand daughter of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne.  Louise and Gladys were first cousins.  Below, Louise, right and Gladys at Louise's home at Scenic Point, Louisville, Tennessee, April 2, 1978.  Ft. Loudon Lake (the Tennessee River) is in the background.

So, I close this remembrance with a picture taken in Damascus, Virginia in 1938, almost 40 years earlier, in which both Gladys and Louise were present.  Left to right are Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (the writer's mother, 1923-2015), Louise, Gladys and Doris Osborne Akers (1912-1986). Two sets of sisters, both first cousins visiting the home of Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright.

Research from the Center for Appalachian Studies

by Glenn N. Holliman

Notes from a Crowded Computer....

While on a recent cruise, I spent time in my cabin cleaning out computer files and rearranging my very confused notes.  Several years ago, I spent an afternoon in the Center for Appalachian Studies at the State University in Boone, North Carolina, and took numerous notes from just a few of the many volumes on local and family histories.  Here are a few items I saved.

One volume in which I explored was Ashe County, N.C. Cemetery Records by Russell Hamilton, published 1999.  This is only a partial list of my Wilson and Osborne ancestors buried in two Ashe County grave yards.

 Above, my son, Christopher S. Holliman takes a picture of my grand daughter, Camille Elizabeth Holliman, standing by the grave of her 4th great grandmother, Caroline Greer Wilson (1828-1911).  This photograph was taken in summer 2013 at the Wilson Cemetery on Oscar Wilson Road in Sutherland, North Carolina.  One generation hands down to the next the stories of family.

 

When I was a boy in the 1950s, I remember on a thundery day in East Tennessee my mother, the late Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, telling me of her grandmother, Frances (Frankie) Wilson Osborne who was terribly afraid of thunder storms and used to hide under her bed.  Right, Frankie in old age at her home in Bristol, Tennessee, 1930s.

Mother also told me of the bushwhacking of her great grandfather, Isaac who was Frankie's father.  Frankie was with him when he was shot in June 1864 during the Civil War while hoeing corn.  Decades later the memoirs of The Rev. William A. Wilson, Frankie's brother, told of the event in detail.  These writings have now been published in the work, Neighbor to Neighbor by Appalachian State University's Center for Appalachian Studies.

Below is a partial list of those in Wilson Cemetery.  Many reading this posting have been to this cemetery where my generation's great, great grandparents, Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson, are resting. Birth and death dates are given.  Perhaps this list will help some who are filling in Ancestry.com profiles.  If you see any errors, please let me know.

1.Nancy Emeline Wilson, 25 Feb 1850 – 4 Dec 1919

2. Caroline Greer Wilson, 10 Dec 1828 - 8 Sep 1911, w of Isaac Wilson

3. L. Boyd Wilson, 8 Dec 1885 - 24 Dec 1885, s/John W & Rebecca Wilson

4. Isaac Wilson, 16 Dec 1822 – 17 June 1864, CSA NC Co. E, 37^th Reg.

5. Mary McClellan Wilson, 10 Mar 1868 – 14 May 1949, w. of W.A. Wilson, Sr.

6. Oscar Thomas Wilson, 24 Feb. 1889 – 29 Aug 1985, s/Robert B. and Sarah Wilson

7. Rebecca Wilson, 21 Sep 1862 – 19 Aug 1954, wife of John Wilson, D/Jacob & Eliza Wilson

8. Robert Boyd Wilson, 4 Jan 1860 – 17 Feb 1949, s/Isaac and Caroline Greer

9. Robert McClellan Wilson, 23 Dec 1897 – 17 Sep 1904, S/Wm. A and Mary McClellan

10. Sarah Ellen Wilson, 6 Mar 1866 – 1 Mar 1952, W/Robert B.; D/Jacob and Eliza Wilson

11. William Albert Sr.,  20 Dec 1861 – 18 Feb 1951, S/Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson

12. William Albert, Jr., 17 Aug 1894 – 19 Nov 1983, S/W.A. Wilson, Sr. and Mary McClellan Wilson

Right is a view of Wilson Cove, the large farm that Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson acquired after their marriage in 1849, and which was divided among their children after his death.  Today, there are numerous owners of plots in the cove, not related to each other.  The elevation of the farm is at 3,200 feet.  The Wilson Cemetery is out of the picture at the upper left.

Another cemetery Mr. Hamilton studied is the Osborne Cemetery in Ashe County not too far from the Wilson Cemetery.  Here another pair of my great, great grandparents George Washington and Mary Baldwin Osborne, are buried.

This cemetery is located at Map Coordinates C07; on the south side of NC-88, o.55 mile north of West Peak Road, SR-1119, across the New River on a hill 4000’ from the road, chain link fence, 60’ by 75’. It has 22 graves at this North Fork Township location and was in good condition in the 1990s.

1.      George Washington Osborne, Sr. 28 Apr 1803 – 18 Apr 1882, S/Jonathan Osborne and Agnes Wells

2.     Mary Baldwin, 11 Feb 1803 – 21 Jan 1895, W/George W. Osborne, Sr.

3.     Clem W. Osborne, 26 Feb. 1835 – 23 Jan 1902, S/Geo. W. and Mary Baldwin.

4.     Effie A. Lewis, 1873 – 1954, W/Walter R. Osborne.

5.     Esther S. Osborne, 16 Aug 1910 – 14 Aug 1985, D/Walt R. Osborne & Effie Lewis.

6.     Ruby Hill Osborne, 28 Oct – 13 May 1935, D/Walt R. and Effie Lewis Osborne

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!

Who is this G. W. Osborne?

by Glenn N. Holliman

Recently I received an email and pictures from a former antique dealer who found this blog on the Internet.  She has in her possession an object that has the name G.W. Osborne embedded.  I thank her for her email.  Here are her words.

"Do not know if this has anything to do with your family. I am redoing a room and when I was cleaning my old vintage register (see pictures) I took notice in the label on the side of it.

It reads:     Re-Order From

                    G. W. Osborne

                   Box 358

                   Crystal River, Fla.

I thought I still had the little work orders in the file, but when I was cleaning they are not there any longer. It seems to me if my memory is right that the work orders were small yellow paper and might of been a machine shop or repair business of some sort. The pictures are not great as I can not get a clear shot on my staircase. The thing weighs a ton, or I would take it outside and take better pictures.

Thought I would google it, and came up with your address.

I have had it for years. I am actually from Cape Cod Mass. When I was there I sold antiques. I used to go on antiques buying trips into Penn. all around  Lancaster, Allentown, and York. I picked it up on one of my trips, back in the mid 80's. Have carried it around with me ever since. Love it. I would love to know the history of it."

Left, a photograph believed to be my great grandfather, G.W. Osborne, not a merchant in Florida but a farmer in North Carolina and Tennessee

Hmmm...yes, my great and great, great grandfathers are named George Washington Osborne, but to my knowledge neither every visited Florida, much less lived there.  G. W. Osborne, 1803-1882, was born in Grayson County, Virginia, the son of Jonathan Osborne, 1753-1831, who was born in Yadkin Valley in Rowan County, North Carolina, and died on a farm in Grayson near his more famous pioneer brother, Enoch. 

Local Ashe County, North Carolina historian, Rufus Myers, has written about numerous of my Mother's ancestors (Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, 1923).  Her grandfather, George Washington Osborne, 1846-1927, the son of the above G. W. Osborne, was born along the North Fork of the New River in Ashe County. 

This G.W. farmed in Sutherland, Ashe County after marrying Frances Caroline Wilson (1851-1940), daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson.  Later he moved his family to Cove Creek, Watagua County, North Carolina, and during the Depression of 1896 tried farming and the mercantile business in Blountville, Tennessee, Damascus, Virginia, Afton, Tennessee and finally retired to Bristol, Tennessee where he died and is buried.

According to Myers and my research the Osbornes originally came from New Jersey.  I have yet to prepare a comprehensive history of this branch of my family, but many Americans were named after the first President George Washington.  Perhaps one branch of the prolific Osborne family did settle along the Gulf Coast of Florida. 

Crystal River, Florida is about two hours north of Tampa, and is only a century old.  Originally the community developed from the local cedar that was cut and made into pencils.  Perhaps this Mr. Osborne migrated  south from the mountains and made furniture from the native Florida wood at the turn of the last century?

My thanks to the inquisitive lady who wrote me. Can any one help us with this family mystery?

More Photos from My Sister's Attic Part 4

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our trip through a box in my sister's, Becky Holliman Payne, attic continues.  These are odds and ends.  They are not in any order but each photograph tells a story of a different time and place.

To All:  My articles are scattered on various names of persons mentioned in my blogs below and in other Ancestry.com sites.  An archive of material may be found in the Records page of www.bholliman.com.

I want to begin with the picture below.  Can anyone help identify him?  Several clues here - one Damascus in the background.  From 1908 - 1910, my great grandparents, G.W. Washington and France Wilson Osborne owned a boarding house in that southwest Virginia town, not far Tennessee and North Carolina.

Notice this young, handsome man is sewing.  Is he a tailor?  A clothing store owner?  The fascinating advertisement for Bruner Woolens illustrates a pre-World War airplane.  Can any one help with the clothing styles?  Could this be Ward Wright, the brother of David Wright who married Pearl Osborne in 1912?

This picture was taken indoors when such pictures were usually studio shots.  The lighting is perfect, and we can enjoy the young man's snazzy bow tie and horizontal stripped socks!  He would do well to sweep the floor before the boss comes in.

The girl, second from left, in the white blouse is my great grandmother, Mayme Osborne (Stansbery) probably taken when she was 14 in 1910.  The setting appears to be in Damascus, Virginia, a village whose mountain rivers still overflow on occasion.  The other young ladies are unidentified.  Who does the hair of the girl on the extreme right? 

Mayme would move with her parents to Afton, Tennessee later in 1910 when she would meet and marry Charles S. Stansbery, Sr..  They married in 1914, with her father, G.W. Osborne conducting the ceremony.

Horse and buggy photographs, especially when this clear, can't be passed up.  Who is the chap in the seat?  He appears to be dozing with a bowler hat tilted to protect him from the sun.  In the meantime, the horse obliges with a stately pose.  Any information on person and place, most welcome.

And I will stop with these pictures....first is of my late Uncle Charles Stansbery, Jr. (1918-2006), age 6, in 1924 living in Bristol, Tennessee.  He looks like a living advertisement for Buster Brown shoes.  Charles, or 'Red' as he was know due to his red hair, joined the Army Air Corp in 1938, serving until the early 1960s. 

The second picture was taken 19 years later when Charles was home on leave in 1943.  It was a fortuitous leave.  During the three weeks home he met the love of his life, Anne D. Smith (Stansbery).  Caught up in the rush of war, they married after knowing each other only five weeks.  The marriage only latest until Anne's death in 2002!  A beautiful love story involving a Tennessee boy who was dressed as 'Buster Brown'.

 

Below, Charles and Anne Stansbery in 1975, no longer with a Buster Brown hair-do or an Army uniform.

 

 

 

 

For more information or to ask for an invitation, please contact Glenn N. Holliman at glennhistory@gmail.com.

K

More Photographs from my Sister's Attic, Part 3

by Glenn N. Holliman

Ah, the things one finds when an attic is explored.  Recently, my sister, Becky Holliman Payne of Tennessee, went through her boxes of memorabilia received from her mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick and Louise Stansbery Sherwood.  I long ago thought what could be found, had been found.  As I have shared in the last two postings, I was wrong!

Below is a photograph many of us have seen, and of which several of us distant cousins have copies.  I have believed this shows my great grandparents, George Washington and Frances (Frankie) Wilson Osborne around the time of their wedding in January 1867.  Frankie was a young bride, (1851-1940) a daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Sutherland, Ashe County, North Carolina.  G.W. was older, (1847-1927) born to parents  G.W. (1803-1882) and  Mary Baldwin Osborne (1803-1899), also of Ashe County.  It was around this date that G.W. was ordained a Southern Methodist pastor at Sutherland Methodist Church in Ashe County.  

Below is the original tin type, the first time I have seen it.  It shows G.W. holding what appears to be a Bible.  But the date is not 1867; we now know it was 1874 due to the fact, one of their children, Pearl Osborne Wright (1890-1980) wrote on the back of the framed tin type. 

 

As she dated this frame in 1940 (see picture below), my Great Aunt Pearl probably inherited this when Frankie died in November of that year.  In time the photograph passed to my Aunt Louise Sherwood, then to my Mother, and finally to my sister.

 

  

Note the instructions Pearl (Mrs. Dave Wright), pictured below ca 1940,  at her Damascus, Virginia home, gave the photographer to 'spruce up' the tin type.

 

Also, below found in the attic this picture taken ca 1933 of Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006), who kept the memorabilia in her home in Knoxville, Tennessee until her death.  Her husband was Vance R. Sherwood, Sr. (1910-1990).

 

Two sisters who were quite close all their lives were Louise (left below) and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, right below (b 1923), this writer's mother.  This precious photograph of the two sisters at play, which I had never seen before,  may have been made in 1927.  They lived with their parents, Charles S. and Mayme Osborne Stansbery in Bristol, Tennessee, where their grandparents, G.W. and Frankie Osborne also resided from the late 1910s to their deaths.

So, to paraphrase a popular television credit card commercial, 'What's in your attic?"

For more information or to ask for an invitation, please contact Glenn N. Holliman at glennhistory@gmail.com. Or visit the Holliman-Long Ancestry.com site and www.bholliman.com virtual archive.

 

More Photographs from my Sister's Attic

by Glenn N. Holliman

Last post, I placed pictures of The Rev. William A. Wilson, my grandmother's (Mayme Osborne Stansbery) uncle.  These were found in my sister's attic (Becky Holliman Payne) in Tennessee.  Below is one of the pictures posted of Will Wilson evidently outside of his Methodist school in Japan.

Cousin Shirley Sorrell,  descended through John Wilson, a brother of Will Wilson, had in her collection of family photographs a picture (see below) evidently made at the same time and place in Japan as the pictures held by my branch of the family!  Somewhat damaged, the clothing, flowers, building and setting are identical.  This was probably made in the 1920s, the last decade of Uncle Will's forty years of service in the mission field.

 

 

 In the same group of 'attic' pictures saved through the generations by my family branch are pictures of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson, my generation's great great grandparents.  These two copies are 'rough' and seem to have had some hand drawn 'touch up'.  On the back of each, in my grandmother's handwriting is the following identification:

 "Caroline Greer Wilson, born Dec. 10, 1828, died Sept. 8, 1911.  Fell and broke hip June 8, 1907".  Many of my distant cousins have the same pictures, although in better condition.

 

  

 The 'touch up' is much more visible in the picture of Isaac Wilson.  Note his collar and front are basically a drawing. Written on the back of his photograph are the words: "Isaac Wilson, born Dec. 16, 1822.  Died June 17, 1864. Killed in Civil War."

 

 

The attic box revealed two photographs of my grandmother that I had not seen before.  The one below must have been taken ca 1897 when Mayme Osborne was only one year old.  It was about that time that G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne (daughter of the above Isaac and Caroline Wilson) left Cove Creek in Watauga County, North Carolina and moved to Blountville, Tennessee in Sullivan County.  The county was wracked by a Depression during that time, and George Washington Osborne gave up farming and meager farm prices to run a general store.  

 

 Below is Mayme O. Stansbery ca 1940, a formal portrait taken when she was in her mid-40s. She was in ill health much of her adult life, and she passed away at age 47, December 1943.  She and Charles S. Stansbery, Sr. parented three children - Louise Frances Stansbery Sherwood (1914-2006), Charles S. Stansbery, Jr. (1918-2006) and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015), this writer's mother).

 

 

For more information or to ask for an invitation, please contact Glenn N. Hollian at glennhistory@gmail.com. Or vvisit the Holliman-Long family tree in Ancestry.com.  Likewise the virtual archive www,bholliman.com. 



 

 



Discovered - Lost Photographs of The Rev. William A. Wilson



by Glenn N. Holliman

October 29, 2013 I visited my sister, Rebecca Louise Holliman Payne in Tennessee who was in the process of sorting her family pictures.  One box she had stored in her attic years ago was an inheritance of memorabilia from our late Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006).  Louise was the daughter of Mayme T. Osborne (1896-1953) and Charles S. Stansbery (1893-1957). Below Mayme and Louise in 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where the family had moved during World War II.

Louise's maternal grandparents were G.W. Osborne (1844-1927) and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940), both originally from Ashe County, North Carolina.  They had met in 1865 when G.W. and a cousin, Richard Franklin Osborne, took refuge in the home of Caroline Greer Wilson (1828-1911), the recent widow of Isaac Wilson (1822-1864) ambushed on his farm during the Civil War.

In the attic box were photos from the Stansberys and three intriguing ones of Louise's great uncle and a brother of Frances Wilson Osborne, The Rev. William A. Wilson (1861-1950).  The pictures are in excellent condition and may have been professionally made.  They were taken in Japan where Will served as a Southern Methodist missionary from 1890 to 1930.

I emailed these photos to Michael Ignelzi, a direct descendant of William Wilson, but he had not seem them in the family.  So I am sharing them now with the larger family, asking if others have copies of these picture or know when they were taken of our fascinating  ancestor who moved in his life from the lush, but isolated mountains of western North Carolina, to a Japan awakening from centuries of  self-imposed isolation from the West. 

 

Educated at the University of North Carolina, Class of 1889 at Chapel Hill, Will was ordained a Southern Methodist Church pastor at his own Sutherland Methodist Church in Ashe County.  (My own great grandfather, G. W. Washington, was ordained a lay pastor in the same denomination in the 1870s in the same church.)  It is from Will's memoirs that we know so much of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson and the travail of the Civil War in the family.

I would like to think in the picture below, evidently taken in Will's home, that one can see the likeness of his mother, Caroline Greer Wilson, in the middle photograph on the shelf above Will's head.  Unfortunately who the women are with Will are not identified, but one assumes they are connected to his church or school work in Japan.

 

The above picture is labeled in English as having been processed by K. Mimura in Okayama, Japan.  These pictures may have been taken as publicity for the Southern Methodist Church and its missionary work in Asia.  My belief is my great grandmother, Frankie Wilson Osborne, obtained them from her brother to share with her Anderson Street Methodist Church missionary society in Bristol, Tennessee in the 1920s.

 

When World War II began, Okayama housed a Japanese Army camp. On June 29, 1945, the city was attacked with fire bombs. Almost all the city was burned, and more than 1700 people were killed. Okayama suffered terrible damage in the war, losing more than 12,000 households.  In near by Hiroshima, another site of Will's work, the U.S. Army Air Corp also dropped the first atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 killing over 80,000 immediately.   Below the ruins of Okayama and Will's work after the incendiary raid. (Wikipedia)

 

 

At that time in 1945, Will Wilson had been in retirement in his Durham, North Carolina home for almost 15 years.  Whatever must have been his emotions that horrid summer during the War when his life's work and many of his Japanese friends were destroyed?  One can scarce imagine his conflicted feelings.

 

  

For more information or to ask for an invitation, please contact Glenn N. Holliman at glennhistory@gmail.com.  Likewise at the Holliman-Long Ancestry.com site.  Or visit www.bholliman.com, a virtual archive.