Ancestors & Descendants of
John Andrew Holland
of
Sycamore Hill, Freestone County, Texas

What a difference a word makes in recounting your birthplace! John Andrew Holland said that he was born in Calhoun County, Georgia on his Confederate pension application. After exhaustive searches by many Holland researchers with no luck in finding him or his family, we decided to see if he might have been from Calhoun, Georgia which is in Gordon County. We knew that he had a brother, M. P. Holland, from a letter that one of our family members owns and we knew that M. P. lived in Pike County Arkansas. We also knew that he had a brother, L. C. Holland. In the Gordon County, Georgia 1850 Federal Census Index, there were two Hollands listed. Both William Hollands. Since John Andrew and Amanda's oldest child was named William Vinson and her father's name was Vincent, I wondered if John's father's name might be William Holland. I found someone who could do an 1850 Gordon County, Georgia census lookup for me and voila`! there was my Holland family! I was so excited and couldn't wait to share the news with my mom and several cousins. It just goes to show you that, sometimes, hunches work. From that, I have been able to find several other Holland researchers who have been very helpful such as Terry Holland, Jim Holloway, the Izard Co, AR mailing list (they are some of the sweetest people I have found on the mailing lists) and Web Holland. What I have on this website is mainly the line of Reverend Moses Holland through his son, Chesley Holland to William B. Holland to John Andrew Holland and his descendents. This is by no means a complete genealogy of Reverend Moses Holland. There are plenty of those out there albeit without our line.
In researching the family, I found that they lived for at least two genereations in Anderson County, South Carolina then they moved to Gordon County, Georgia and then to Fayette County, Alabama where two of the sons married and at least John Andrew marched off to war with the 11th Alabama Cavalry and where he mustered out. Sometime between 1860 and 1880, most of the Holland family could be found in the Fulton County, Arkansas area. By 1880, John Andrew Holland was in Freestone County, Texas though and one of Williams' other sons, Lawrence Christopher Holland was in Jack County, Texas. I am still trying to find out if William B. Holland's family was in Tennessee in 1870 since they aren't in Fayette County, Alabama or in Arkansas as far as I can tell. The only reason I think that they might be in Tennessee is because William's son, Elias F. Holland has a son listed in the 1880 and 1900 census, Lucas or Lucien, who was born in 1869 in Tennessee.
The photo in this background was taken at Sycamore Hill the ancestral home of our Holland family in Texas. One of John Andrew Holland's granddaughters lives there now. Any new information about this interesting family would be greatly appreciated.