W P Holman

HOLMAN

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 9/22/2010 at 16:32:06

History of Woodbury County, Iowa 1984

W P Holman
By Mrs Grant Holman

Mr W P Holman came to Sergeant Bluff in the fall of 1855 to investigate this new country with his brother-in-law, H O Griggs. The propriation who had lain out and were promoting the town gave him a lot and promised him the first lumber sawed in a new mill west of town. He was to build and run a hotel and stage station. Holman left a hired man named Bronson, to build the hotel on the site of the present Town Hall, then went back to Rockville, Connecticut, to get his family.

In February of 1856 he started out with his family and went to Chicago, where he bought a team of horses and one of oxen, wagons and provisions. They were shipped by rail to Iowa City, which was the end of the line. From there the family came by wagon to Sergeant Bluff and started up the hotel, which they ran for several years.

Mr Holman had with him his wife, Lois, and three children: Jerome, Albert and Ella, who later married G W Waitt of Sioux City. In July of 1856 Mrs Holman died; she was the first white woman buried here. Mr Holman later married a school teacher, Miss Carolina Mattison of Connecticut, and they were the ancestors of Ed and Milton Holman.

Two tracts of land by pre-emption were bought from the government by Mr Holman; the price was one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The first years they were here, the Holmans farmed land southwest of Sergeant Bluff to raise corn and hay for the stage horses as well as their own stock. They soon diversified their interests, however, taking over a brick plant which they enlarged and ran for years. They also operated a grocery and general merchandise store and a slaughtering plant.

Jerome Holman and his wife, Katrina had four children: Alice, Helen, Clarence and Edith. Alice married John Swinney; they had one son, Holman, who resides in Rochester, New York. Helen married Dr Harry Schott, and they are survived by their daughter, Mary Katrina Lang of Spokane, Washington, who has one son, David. Edith married Garrett Dolliver, and now lives in Spokane. Clarence married Dora Currier of Salix in 1909; he died in the 1918 flu epidemic, and Dora died in 1972. They had two sons, Currier, 1910-1977, and Grant, 1915-, Currier married Lucille Sve of Sioux City in 1937, and they had two sons, Carter, 1938, and Chapin, 1945. Carter is now a doctor of oral surgery in Walnut Creek, California; he married Corrinne Boe of Sioux City in 1961. Chapin is an attorney in Sioux City. Carter and his wife have two children: Christian, 1963, and Tiffany, 1967. Grant is a graduate of the Sergeant Bluff High School, and in 1960, married the former Mary Margaret Chandler of Sioux City. Grant and his wife have lived east of Sergeant Bluff for the past fifteen years.