John Holladay

wikify|date=November 2007

John Holladay is founder and namesake of the settlement of Holladay's Burg, Utah which became Holladay, Utah. He was an early pioneer in the western US in Colorado, Utah, and California. He was born March 10, 1798, in Kershaw County, Camden District, SC. He married Catherine Beasley Higgins in SC in 1822. They had 10 children, 9 of whom survived early childhood. John's earliest known forbearer in the New World, his great grandfather, was John “The Ranger” Holladay of present-day Spotsylvania County, VA, exact origin unknown, who first appears in colony records around 1702. John is a cousin to Ben Holladay, “The Stagecoach King”.

His father, Daniel Holladay Jr., along with his grandfather, Daniel Holladay, were signers of the South Carolina Declaration of Independence. Daniel Jr. was born in Virginia in 1752 and died in Alabama on Feb. 4, 1837. He served in the Revolutionary War as a Sergeant with the 2nd South Carolina Regiment under the command of Col. William Moultrie defending Charleston Harbor in the Battle of Sullivan's Island. He also served in Francis Marion's Brigade. In 1826, with son John and his young family, Daniel Jr. moved from South Carolina to join his son William Daniel at Moscow, Marion County, AL. Daniel Jr. subsequently applied for and was adjudicated a Revolutionary War veteran pension and land Grant in Alabama.

in 1844, in Alabama, John Holladay joined the LDS Church. In the spring of 1846, at the urging of the Church, he joined the “Mississippi Saints” migration west under the leadership of John Brown. He left Alabama with his wife and eight of his nine living children and the families of the two who were married. Their expected destination was California. The “Mississippi” party was supposed to meet the main migration party led by Brigham Young on the road west. Young postponed his own departure until the next year without letting them know. When the “Mississippi” group did not meet up with the main party after traveling as far as Ft. Laramie, they headed south to Pueblo, Colorado for the winter with the assistance of a trapper/guide,Jean-Baptiste Richard manager of the adobe trading post at Pueblo. In Pueblo, they set up a separate village, including a log chapel, near the trapper settlement on the Arkansas River and prepared for winter. The sick detachments from the US Army Mormon Battalion joined them there later. In late spring, on receiving word that main party was enroute, they continued their trip, arriving in the Salt Lake area on July 29, 1847.

In Utah, John settled his family and others of his group on Spring Creek, a tributary of Little Cottonwood Creek at a place which was called Holladay’s Burg after him and which became the present-day town of Holladay, Utah.

In 1851, the Holladay family joined Amasa Lyman’s LDS Church sanctioned colonization of Rancho San Bernardino, present-day San Bernardino, CA.

The family returned to Utah in 1857 after Brigham Young engineered the demise of the San Bernardino Colony. Back in Utah, John settled at Holladay Springs, Utah near present day Santaquin, Utah where he remained until his death on Dec 31, 1862.

His children, who pioneered in Utah, Arizona, Idaho, and California, were:
*Lutisha (Letitia) Hollis Holladay m. Allen Freeman Smithson
*Catherine Beasely Holladay m. Braxton Acres
*John Daniel Holladay m.Rhoda Matthews, Katie Blake, and Hollis
*Sarah Ann Holladay m.Absolom Porter Dowdle
*Karen Happoch Holladay m.Thomas Bingham
*David Hollis Holladay m.Henrietta Taylor
*Keziah Donnel Holladay m. Henry Green Boyle
*Thomas Wiley Middleton Holladay, m. Ann Mathews
*Lenora McCray Holladay d.1853

References

* Bagley, Will and David Bigler. "Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives", "Kingdom of the West: Mormons on the American Frontier". Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark and Company, ISBN 0-87421-294-4, 2000.

* Ricketts, N. B. "The Mormon Battalion; U. S. Army of the West, 1846 - 1848". Logan: Utah State University Press, ISBN 087421 215 4, 1996.

* Roberts, B.H. (1919), "The Mormon Battalion: Its History and Achievements", Salt Lake City: Deseret News.

* Cooke, P. S. et al. "The Conquest of New Mexico and California in 1846 - 1848". Glorieta, NM; Rio Grande Press, 1964.

* Tyler, Daniel (1881), "A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War, 1846–1847", Chicago: Rio Grande Press

* LeCompte, Janet. "Pueblo, Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: Society on the High Plains, 1832-1856", University of Oklahoma ISBN 0 8061 1723 0

* The Holladay Family, "Alvis Milton Holladay Sr". Douglas Printing Company Nashville, TN, 1994.

* Carter, "Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol 2", Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers.