Widow Susan Holland
(30 Nov 1796 - 10 Jun 1888)
Descendant List and Notes
The only clue we have ever had to the family of Mary J Gray is a ragged memory handed down from a son of Polly Ann, daughter of Joseph and Mary J. Gray. Oscar Leddon, son of George Washington Leddon and Polly Ann Gray, dictated to his nephew Abner Preston Leddon in 1938 all that he could remember about his ancestors. A copy of Oscar's story was given in 1974 to Lavinia Helms, a cousin and fellow Gray researcher, who passed it on to me. As a result, and for lack of anything better to go on, I have spent twenty years, off and on, tracking information on a family of Hollands in Gadsden County, Florida.
Oscar's memory involved an apocryphal story about a girl named Polly Ann being kidnapped from somewhere in Europe, transported to America and sold, sight unseen, maybe as an indentured servant, to a Mr Holland, who had been her old sweetheart (I suppose back in Europe before he went to seek his fortune in the new world). This Mr Holland and the kidnapped girl were married in North Carolina and later moved to Georgia. Their daughter was Oscar's grandmother Mary J Gray, although Oscar called her Polly Ann, also. (He called all the women in the story Polly Ann.) Twice he mentioned the name Gibbs as a surname for the kidnapped girl, but the second time, he wasn't sure.
Both versions of Oscar's story have his greatgrandmother, Mr Holland's wife, dying in Quincy, Florida, when she was 113 years old. One version has her death date as May of 1893. Now, we never believed anyone lived to be 113, but the Florida 1885 census does show a 96-year-old Susan Holland from North Carolina in Gadsden County, where Quincy is located. She was only 84 years old on the 1880 census and she was the only Holland in Gadsden County. A researcher of the family of Susan's daughter Eady Holland Tolar Inman says that a family Bible in her line gives Susan Holland's birth date as 30 Nov 1796 and death date as 10 Jun 1888. An analysis of the entries in the Bible has led me to several inferences about Susan's family as it may have related to Mary J Gray.
The five-year discrepancy in death date doesn't bother me - - Oscar was only 16 in 1888 and it's an understandable skip in an elderly man's memory fifty years later. He did quite well in remembering the names of his parents' siblings and even their spouses' names, but they were people he had known in his youth; beyond them, he was repeating other people's memories, and he may have condensed two or three generations into one. His grandmother Mary J may very well have been called Polly, and it appears that the woman he called Polly Ann Holland was actually known as Sue Ann, not Polly Ann -- family Bible entries for both her and her daughter Susan Caroline list them as "Suannah", not "Susan".
The widow Susan Holland appears on the 1850 Gadsden census with her three children, Eady, Bryan/Bryant and Caroline, but she is not found in Gadsden or anywhere else in 1860 or 1870. However, there is a Dougherty County, Georgia, marriage record for Susan Caroline Holland and John W. Tolar for 3 Jan 1858 (image available on familysearch.org; Caroline's pension application says she married in Albany, Ga, 1857). She and John W Tolar were back in Gadsden County for the 1860 census, but in 1870 they were enumerated in Albany adjacent a Lemacks family that by 1880 had moved to the Bridge Creek area of Colquitt County, Georgia, where the Enos and Eli Holland families lived. The two elder Lemacks daughters were enumerated in Mitchell County in 1880 adjacent to Daniel and Helon Gray. Was there some connection between this Lemacks family and the Tolars, the Grays and the Hollands of Bridge Creek?
What was Caroline doing in Albany, Ga, when she married there? Had Suannah moved up to that area with her two younger children, Caroline and Bryant, sometime after daughter Eady married Larkin Tolar (John W's brother) in Gadsden in 1851? If so, did it have anything to do with the fact that Joseph and Mary J Gray now lived in nearby Dooly/Worth County? The area where the Grays lived (in or near Pinderton) was in the southern part of early Dooly County which became the southeast corner of Lee County east of Flint River, then Dooly again and then Worth. The town of Pinderton, probably less than twenty miles from Albany, was close enough to serve as Albany's post office until 1836.
In 1860 Dougherty County, Georgia, where Caroline Holland was married in 1858, there was only one Holland listed: a William Holland, b. abt 1830 in Dooly County, Ga. In 1830 Dooly County, the only Hollands listed were Daniel S (age 70-80, 1 male 10-15, 1 female 70-80, 3 females 15-20, 3 slaves), three entries from Jethro (age 30-40, 3 males under 5, 1 female under 5, 1 female 10-15, 1 female 20-30, no slaves), and Mariah (apparent widow 30-40, 3 males under 5, 1 male 10-15, 1 female 5-10, no slaves. There was a Bryant Holland listed as one poll, no land, on an 1857 tax list for Dougherty County. William Holland appeared on that tax roll for 1858-1860, one poll, no land.
Leon County Hollands
A BLM land patent was granted to a Caroline Holland 28 Jul 1838 for 40 acres (Lot 5) in S23 1-N 2-W near the county line between Gadsden and Leon (it lists in both counties), along the Ochlochonee River. In 1843, William Holland, Jr, bought Lot 4 (adjoining?) in that same section. A current map shows that section to be mostly on the Leon County side of the river with just a tiny triangle across in Gadsden. There were several Hollands in Leon County, who may or may not be connected to the Gadsden Hollands.
