John Holladay - Family

Family

John Holladay was born March 10, 1798, in Camden District, Kershaw County, South Carolina. A few descendants insist on calling him John Daniel though published historical accounts agree his given name was John not John Daniel. John Holladay's 1861 obituary in the Deseret News calls him John Holladay as does his original headstone now in Santaquin cemetery. John had a son named John Daniel whose own son was John Daniel Jr. who was born in San Bernardino in 1851 and died in Arizona.

John Holladay married Catherine Beasley Higgins, also Camden born, in South Carolina in 1822. They had 10 children, 9 of whom survived early childhood. John's earliest known forbearer in the New World, his great grandfather, is John "The Ranger" Holladay of Belfonte in present-day Spotsylvania County, Virginia. John "The Ranger", first appears in New World records in 1702. He probably came from the area of Chalford, Glouchestershire, England. "The Ranger is a also an ancestor of Ben Holladay, "The Stagecoach King".

After John "The Ranger" died in 1742, John's father, Daniel Holladay Jr., and his grandfather, Daniel Holladay moved to South Carolina. Both Daniels were signers of the South Carolina Declaration of Independence. While residing in the High Hills of the Santee, Daniel Jr. enlisted when South Carolina’s troops were first organized on 4 November 1775 as an orderly-sergeant in Col. William Moultrie's 2 South Carolina Regiment. He served under Captain James McDonald in the battle of Fort Sullivan on 28 June 1776. On 8 August 1777 he was reprimanded for gambling. He was reprimanded on 3 April 1778 for neglect of duty. He was discharged on 6 April 1778. Following his father's death In 1826, Daniel Jr. moved from South Carolina with son John and his young family, to join another son, William Daniel, at Moscow, Marion County, Alabama. Daniel Jr. subsequently applied for and was adjudicated a Revolutionary War veteran pension and land Grant in Alabama. Daniel Jr. died on Feb. 4, 1837 and was buried at Mulberry Cemetery in Moscow, Lamar County, Alabama. Also buried there is John's sister Lutisha and her husband Col. John Hollis. Lutisha's daughter, Susana Fleming Hollis, married James G. Bankhead of the Alabama Bankhead political family. Their son, John Hollis Bankhead, served in the US Senate. United States Senator John H. Bankhead II and Speaker of the House William Brockman Bankhead were his sons and actress Tallulah Bankhead his granddaughter. The cross-country Bankhead Highway was named after him.