Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 262, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1910 — A Corner in Ancestors [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Corner in Ancestors

By ELEANOR LEXINGTON

Holmes Family -(Copyright by McClure Syndicate)

Holmes is a name with an attractive personality, if the expression is able. Is it not pretty because with the omission of one letter we have homes? Homes indeed is one form of the name found in colonial times. Holmes is from the Norman word holm, an islet in a lake or river; it also means lowlands.. In German, it is Holm; in Flemish, Holms. Holmo is found in Domesday book. Holmbury is a place in Surrey. The family has been prominent for centuries, in Yorkshire, Norfolk, Chester, Hertfordshire, Lancaster, Cambridge and Nottingham. The chief branch of the family, in Scotland, lives at Kilmanock, where the last Lord Holmes died in 1764, the title becoming extinct. The Holmes were in Virginia in the early days, and have helped to make

history all along the ages. In 1635 George Holmes wgs the leader in an expedition to the valley of the Delaware river; this was several years before Penn’s time. George Holmes finally settled in New York city, where he owned a large slice of the town, or from what is now Forty-seventh street to Fifty-second street. It takes away one’s breath to think of the millions—shall we say billions —to which his heirs would be entitled had the property remained in the family all these years. What connection there is between George and Thomas Holmes, if any, the writer is not prepared to say. Thomas was the son of Thomas, a lawyer of Gray’s inn, London, and a soldier in the Civil .war. Thomas, Jr., ?ame to Virginia, ! and later removed to New London, where he married "Lucrese” Dudley. Their son John was born 1686, and married Mary Willey. They—that is John and Mary, had “an acre of rocky land on Cedar

swamp, where his father hath planted some apple trees.” Some of this branch of the family removed to East Haddam. There was a Captain John about this time, and a eood ancestor to appropriate. He is, without doubt, John, son of Thomas. Captain John died 1734, and his was the first burial in One of the East Haddam grave yards. His widow married Samuel Adams, also of ‘East Haddam, whose first wife, Eleanor Lee, bequeathed him a rich legacy—l 6 children. Capt. John Holmes atid wife also had a large family. Other patriarchs of the Holmes family are George, a freeman of Roxbury, 1639; Isaac of Marshfield, John and William of Plymouth, 1632. William was a lieutenant In the Pequot war*, but 'as he neglected to take a wife, no descendants are scanning the records on his account. Let us hope that he was well fined for this little oversight, for bachelors were fined, and quite properly, too. * The Holmes of New York state trace back to Lemuel, son of Joseph, of Plymouth, bom 1766. Lemuel settled not far from Albany, and his wife was Polly Battles. Heitman’s “Officers of the American Revolution” gives the following names of the Holmes: From Massachusetts, Captain Lemuel; from Connecticut, Surgeon David; Surgeon’s Mate Silas, and Lieutenant Uriel; from Rhode Island, Lieutenant Hugh; from New Jer* sey, Captains * James and Jonathan; Lieutenants John, William and Elisha; from Pennsylvania, Lieutenant James and Ensign David; from Virginia, Lieutenant Benjamin Holmes, whose name also appears as Hoomes; Surgeon David and Ensigns Isaac and James; from Georgia, Chaplain John. Oliver Wendell Holmes was the son of Rev Ablel Holmes, and his second wife, Sarah, daughter of Oliver Wendell of Boston. Abiel was born at Woodstock, Conn., the son of Surgeon David of the Revolution. Ablel’s first wife was Mary, daughter of Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale college. The first years of his ministerial life were spent in the state of Georgia. r The coat-of-arms reproduced is blazoned: Sable, a lion rampant, argent, charged with three bendlets, gules. Crest: A demi-griffln, azure, gutlee d’or, holding in his dexter claw a sword, erect, azure: pommel and hilt, or? Other arms are blazoned for the Holmes, and most of them show that they were granted in the early days of heraldry.

Holmes