Isaac Holland and Beyond

According to our family historian, Robert Henry Harkness (my Great-Grandfather), the remotest known ancestor of George Franklin Barrett (my Great-Great Grandfather) was Isaac Holland Sr., my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather, who was born in April 1766, died Sept. 18, 1826 at the Half Way House between Baltimore and Annapolis, and was buried at Annapolis, Md September 19, 1826.

Family legend has it that Isaac Holland came from England to America as a drummer boy in a British regiment during the Revolutionary War, and after the Revolution he remained in America and settled at Annapolis, Md, working at the trade of carpenter. His wife was a Miss Jane Stuart, and was said to be descended from the Scotch royal family of Stuarts. Her marriage to Isaac Holland, Sr. was against her parents’ wishes.

The children of this couple were:

Henry Stuart Holland born Jan. 11, 1791 at Annapolis, Md
Elizabeth		"      Sept. 16, 1792 & died Sept. 17, 1792.
Joseph			"      _______, 1793, at Annapolis, Md
Isaac (Jr)		"      May 13, 1796 at Annapolis, Md
Kitty			"      Feb. 22, 1799 at Annapolis, Md, died Feb. 15, 1889
Elizabeth		"      Apr. 29, 1802 at Annapolis, Md  died May 24, 1802

Near the end of his life, Isaac Holland Sr. went to live with his daughter Kitty (my Great-Great-Great Grandmother) at the Half Way House which Kitty’s husband Joseph A. Barrett ran. While there, he applied for and obtained a pension, supposedly from the British Government, for serving in the Revolutionary War. However, I have papers in my possession which indicate that he was actually an American drummer boy, fighting for America, and was granted a pension at age 55 for doing so. I now believe that not only was Isaac born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, but his father, whose name was Edward, was also born there. It is possible that the original Hollands from whom Edward was descended came over with the Lord Baltimore in the 1600s. If this is true, then our family has roots in America deeper than we knew.

However, Edward had many children, and his children had many children. Thus there were many Hollands in Anne Arundel County in the 1800s. It is possible that there were other Isaac Hollands as well, and so it is possible that there are mistakes in what is generally believed true today by the distant “cousins” I have discovered on the Internet. I suppose it is even possible that our Isaac Sr. was indeed an English drummer boy, and that there was another Isaac Holland who was an American drummer boy. The authority from which Robert Harkness received his information was a good one – the daughter of old Isaac himself, Kitty Barrett. Kitty lived with the Harknesses for her last years and told many stories which Robert recorded as faithfully as he could. We have no way of knowing the absolute truth. That a woman in her late eighties could be confused or forgetful is not an impossibility, and that her grandson-in-law could have misunderstood her communications is also not impossible. In addition, Kitty was estranged from her father for many years, possibly from the time of her mother’s death when she was about six years old, until he came to live with her, so her information may have been fragmented. Furthermore, as far as I can gather, Robert did not write his history until around 1912, more than 20 years after Kitty’s death. His wife Anna must have had some store of knowledge about her Holland relatives as well, but being two generations from Isaac Sr. could have clouded her facts.

A family tree of Edward Holland can be found at this link (which may take a while to load as the tree is composed of 3 image documents). This is the product of the research of Ann Jensen who is descended from Henry Stuart Holland, son of Isaac Sr. She has many family documents stashed in her house, which has been in her family since 1771. I am inclined to trust her sources. According to Ann, there were many genealogies drawn up by the Hollands at different times, and some of them contain conflicting information. Most of them are not signed or dated. She gave me a copy of one such document, wherein Isaac Holland Sr. is listed as having married Delilah Sands a few months after Jane Stewart Holland died, and that Jane Stewart Holland is listed as having died in 1811, when Kitty was 12. Our family lore makes no mention of a second marriage, and furthermore suggested that Jane Stewart Holland died when Kitty was about 6 years old, and so her mother’s cousin, the wife of Governor Lloyd, raised Kitty. I find the whole situation strange by today’s standards, but I know it was not unusual in those days for children to be raised by other more affluent family members. Even so, I could understand a widowed father giving up a 6-year old child for her best interests, but it is hard to comprehend a 12-year old being sent away, when she might be more of a help than a hindrance at that age. The fact that the alleged second marriage was never recorded in our own family documents makes the whole thing seem even stranger. In any case, for more information about Isaac’s mysterious second marriage, my newfound cousin Ann and her historic home, see the document entitled “The Holland – Sands Connection”.

Of course, one of the most beloved stories in our family history is that of the young and brave Stewart Holland, son of Isaac Holland Jr. Stewart Holland was proclaimed a hero when he went down with the wreck of the Steamship Arctic in 1854. When most of the crewmen panicked and seized the lifeboats, Stewart Holland, an apprentice engineer, stayed at his post at the signal gun, hoping against hope to draw help to the sinking ship and its 300+ passenger and crew. He fired his last shot as the ship sank. Eyewitness accounts by survivors memorialized him, and many accounts were written about the wreck and the heroism of Stewart Holland. Two of those accounts are included on this website. The first is by Robert Henry Harkness, and the second is by the above-mentioned Ann Jensen (see Appendix 4 of “The Holland – Sands Connection”). My own family had the privilege of witnessing the dedication of a memorial plaque to Stewart Holland hung in the porch of the John A. Wilson Building in Washington DC. (Formerly known as “The District Building”, the John A. Wilson Building is on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, between 13th and 14th St.) A copy of the inscription of that memorial is given in the document entitled “In Search of Family Landmarks”. It was by the combined efforts of my mother Rosemary Layman Gainer and Mr. Brown, who was an editor with the Daily Press newspaper in Newport News Virginia and associated with the Mariners Museum, also in Newport News, and that the memorial in DC ever came to be. Newport News Shipbuilding funded the plaque.