Ghosts and goblins and ... ancestors? Oh my!

Having left Edna, Myrtle and Gladys last week on their way back home to sort out their cemetery research information, we'll now turn back to family research with an e-mail I received last Friday.

Belton Hollums of Peachtree City sent me a very interesting history of his Hollums family. He writes:

"Judy: I've been reading with interest the adventures of your family research. I did the same thing for my family about 20 years ago, but for reasons different than [those that] motivate most people. For several generations in my father's family, there was this tale: that our name once was Holmes; that two brothers got into a land boundary dispute; and our ancestor changed his name to Hollums. Since there weren't a lot of Hollums around, we all accepted this tale as fact.

"My late mother seemed to always be working on her family history, a project that lasted 40 years. It was not until after she passed away that I took all her huge volume of material and assembled it into her book, 'From Roots to Wings.'* Over the years, I patiently waited for my mother to dig into the Hollums background, but her own work was so difficult, due to her own mother being a Cherokee born in White Path, Ga., and all of her ancestors being from the Cherokee Nation and hideout renegades who escaped the roundup for the Trail of Tears.

"Mother would drag my father and her mother all over the place, visiting old churches, graveyards, etc. On one trip to Cross Keys, S.C., they wandered through the graveyard at the Padget's Creek Baptist Church, (where the first meeting for Southern secession was held). She found some of her father's ancestors buried there and, lo and behold, the place was full of Hollums, Holums, Hollams, Hollems, as well.

"Therefore in the 1980s, curious about the Holmes connection, and now armed with this new information, I went to work myself. A warning here to anyone considering this interesting voyage. Be prepared in advance for surprises. Some good, some bad, but all very worth tracking down! And don't believe anything until you can prove it. Almost every family's verbal story is full of fables.

"The Georgia Archives, the fantastic Federal Archives in East Point, and the top floor of the Atlanta Public Library, are wonderful research havens. You learn what you can; seek help from professional researchers in other states and countries, and always keep an open mind! I spent almost a year trying to connect Holmes to Hollums before I discovered the real story. Others may encounter the same problem of name changing, and before you go off and spin your wheels getting nowhere, first ask the obvious question. Why would anybody change his or her name? Usually it's because they are on the run from the law.

"I learned our name was originally Hallam, English and Irish. My first relative, Robert, arrived on this side of the pond from England, landing in 1620 at Jamestown. Then a few years later his nephew Thomas Hallam came over in 1657 with his two young sons and they settled in Maryland. Skipping through a few generations later was born my sixth great-grandfather William Hallum, who, as an adult, owned 215 acres at Hagerstown, Md., called Hallums Lookout. In 1756, Col. George Washington of the Colonial Militia, along with the British, were fighting the French and Indians for right to this land of ours today. In February and March of that year, a contingent of an American regiment was in Virginia, under the command of Col. Washington.

"One of his men was a lieutenant (ensign in some accounts, captain in others), George Gordon, who along with a few other soldiers, and unknown to their superiors, on Monday evening, March 22, slipped across the Potomac River into Hagerstown. Apparently Lt. Gordon got into an argument with (guess who?), my sixth great-grandfather William Hallum. It seems during this altercation, Lt. Gordon drew his sword and slapped great-grandpaw in the face with the broad side of the sword, and great-grandpaw, who was apparently unarmed, attacked Lt. Gordon, pulled his pistol from his waistband and shot him dead with his own gun.

"Great-grandpaw was taken in by the local sheriff and quickly turned loose. I suspect the sheriff was a relative. However, one of the big shots in Maryland then was Thomas Cresap, (whose son Michael was responsible for starting Lord Dunmore's War in 1774), (who) went through council at the city of Annapolis, then wrote Gov. Dinwiddie and obtained a murder warrant against great-grandpaw.

"William then wasted no time in gathering his wife and personal things, said his good-byes, and took off on the lam. And he, of course, changed his name for a while to William Holmes. He moved down through Virginia to Halifax County where his son, my fifth great-grandfather, William Hollems, was born. Then later (he moved) down to North Carolina where he got involved with Gov. Tryon working for him; had another son James Holloms; and then moved down into South Carolina in the Spartanburg/Greenville area where they stayed put for the next 100 or so years.

"However, unbeknown to him, back in Maryland it seems that papers found on the body of Lt. Gordon gave hint that he was actually providing information to the French regarding Col. George Washington's regiment. Therefore great-grandpaw might not have been a murder suspect after all, but a patriotic hero.

"Years later, my sixth and fifth great-grandfathers, one William Holmes, one William Hollems, served in the American Revolution, as did Willam Hollems' younger brother James Holloms. The 'bounty land' given them for their service was located across the Blue Ridge Mountains in Tennessee, in a new area to be developed as Knoxville, in honor of Henry Knox.

"It was there, with these two contiguous tracts, that William and James were the brothers who did get into an argument over who owed the taxes due on this land, and that caused a split. William was to move back to Spartanburg, and James to stay in the Tennessee Hills, later to become friends with one Davy Crocket. My fourth great-grandfather, Wilson Hollums, a War of 1812 veteran, moved into Georgia in 1855.

"Interesting discoveries? Yes they were, and well worth the research. And I published my own work, 'One of One Thousand, the American House of Hallam, Hallum, Hollums.'* My only regret was that my dad's mother, who told us the Holmes tale, wasn't around to hear the 'rest of the story.'

*Copies donated to the Georgia Archives

"Sincerely, your old friend,

"W. Belton Hollums, Peachtree City"

Thank you so much, Belton, for sharing your family story. Belton and I are old friends who go back further than either of us would like to admit. His mother and my mother were childhood friends.

Looking for your ancestors? Got a genealogy tip? Write to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; e-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com. You can also read these columns online at www.thecitizennews.com. The link is down on the right side of the home page.

Until next week, happy hunting!