Sharon Stewart

Vikki, Moderator

William Dawson Holley did not go home to Mississippi after his discharge. Instead, he joined his brothers Columbus and Godfrey Lee Holley in lower Alabama or northwest Florida. There, like his brothers, he made a second marriage without benefit of divorce from his first wife Mary (Boyce) Holley. His second wife was Amanda Caroline Dannelley; they will be found in the 1870 census for Washington County, FL in Point Washington.

William Dawson Holley’s second wife Amanda Caroline Dannelley was the daughter of James G. Dannelley, Jr. Her brother Oliver Perry Dannelley was the second husband of Martha Jane Holley, widow of Columbus Holley who was killed, so say the storytellers, by the Raider outlaw James Madison “Jim” Ward, who was a deserter from the 33rd AL Inf, CSA and also from the 1st FL Cav, USA. I could go on and on about these connectioions, but I shall end them here.

The story handed down in the second family of William Dawson Holley was that he was from Georgia, and “had been a recruiter for the Confederate Army, and was, therefore, not particularly welcome back in Georgia by the occupying United States Army.” Of course, none of this is true.

The record shows that he and his second “wife” Amanda Caroline Dannelley had one child Adeline Virginia Holley, born January 1868. This child married Stephen Alexander Wesley in 1892; they lived out their lives at Point Washington, FL.

The riddle of William Dawson Holley’s life and his second marriage is told in the small self-published book by his great-granddaughter Peggy Bailer entitled Sandpiper Journal: Memories of Old Point Washington; published in 1995. Mrs. Bailer was a granddaughter of Adeline Virginia Holley and Stephen Alexander Wesley. In her memoir, she states that her grandmother was “an only child and was the constant companion of my great-grandfather Holley. She rode horseback side-saddle in the long full skirts of the day to help him with the herds. . . Later, Holley was shot off his horse by rustlers. When the horse arrived home, its saddle empty, Amanda knew there was trouble. She climbed on the horse, and let him ‘have his head.’ . . . The horse took her to a small branch where she found Holley still alive, and he was able to tell her who shot him. She carried water in his hat to wash his face, but he died there.” William Dawson Holley was buried in Bunker Cemetery, Bunker Cove, Point Washington, FL. His grave is marked and may be found on find-a-grave, but there are no dates on the marker.

The best I can make out, these events occurred in 1877. In June 1878, Amanda Caroline Holley married the family’s “hired hand” Henry F. Wise, who was several years younger than Amanda Caroline. According to the great-granddaughter the marriage was initially for “economic reasons,” but that they grew to love each other. There was no child born of this union.

Vikki

My sources for the above blog are from research that I conducted some twenty years ago, and are not in a form that is downloadable.

The unpublished WPA interviews (from the Federal Writers’ Project of the 1930s) that I cited are held at the Mississippi State Archives in Jackson, MS., and may be read and copied in the archive reading room.

I also researched the Federal manuscript Censuses to identify as many family members as possible. Those censuses are readily available online, either from the National Archives website, or from Ancestry.com.

If any readers out there would like to exchange materials with Dale, I am happy to privately provide you with one another’s email addresses.

Good luck with your research!

Vikki, Moderator

Therefore Dawson Holley served briefly in the Confederacy, but had ample time to return to Jones County, MS and engage in his cattle activities. In regards to his brother Godfrey Lee Holley, when he left Jones Co, MS he went to Coffee Co., AL where brother Christopher Columbus Holley was living. He appears in early March 1864 on a list of Confederate Home Guards for Coffee County, but with an added notation by his name “gone to the Yankees.” Godfrey enlisted in the Union Army in Pensacola in late March 1864.

I would also welcome any information on a record that reveals when, where and how Dawson Holley died.

Thanks so much for sharing your extensive research with Renegade South! This is a very interesting family, and I’ll certainly check my files for possibly more information on Dawson Holley. Meanwhile, I hope we have some readers out there who have researched this family line and can shed light on his fate.

Vikki