When the Baptist preacher gene comes from more than one ancestral line, you wonder how much chance descendants have of avoiding that profession.
Born 17 May 1891 in Jackson County, GA, to Joseph Henry and Nancy Nemeris White Holland, Wiley Preston Holland was such a man. And it caught up to him.
Both Holland’s parents were born in Jackson County, too, and while family information on his mother is scarce, his father’s lines are easily discovered with today’s web genealogy search engines. For instance:
- Joseph Henry Holland was born to Samuel Mayfield and Mary Ann Stephens Holland, who were both born in South Carolina and who both died in Jackson County, GA.
- Samuel Mayfield Holland’s parents were Henry B. and Delilah Mayfield Holland, who were both born in Pendleton District, Anderson County, SC, and who both died in Cartersville, GA.
- Great-great grandfather James Holland of Charlotte, Virginia, married Nancy Vandiver, of South Carolina; both died in Georgia with James passing away in 1831 before his wife entered the Cherokee Land Lottery which accounts for her death in Cobb County.
- Moses Holland, born 17 November 1758 in Cumberland, VA, first (he married two others) wedded Mary Barton of Virginia; he died 8 September 1829 in Anderson, SC. Elder Moses Holland’s name stands out from the middle of a roadside marker for Big Creek Baptist Church, organized in 1788; Holland was pastor to the Anderson County church for more than four decades. Picturesquely situated in Williamston, Big Creek was mother church to several others and its rambling cemetery holds soldiers from five wars as well as the mother of Dr. James Bruton Gambrell, president of Mercer University soon after Wiley P. Holland was born. Moses Holland founded Saluda Baptist Association on 5 November 1803 at a meeting of sister churches at Salem Church, Anderson County. Moses Holland’s tombstone says he founded perhaps twenty-six churches though it names only Big Creek, Hopewell, Neal’s Creek, Friendship, Barker’s Creek, Washington, and Standing Spring.
- Moses was born to John Holland in Essex/Caroline County, VA, while John was born to William Holland, born in the same location though he died in Cumberland County, VA. Wives’ names are less certain though John married a Sarah and William wed a Margaret.
- The earliest Holland in this line in this country is Peter, born in the mid-1600s near Lancashire, England. Peter Holland died in the British colony of Caroline in the mid 1740s.
Did Peter Holland bring Baptist convictions from England? We don’t know. Moses could have been carrying on a family religious affiliation or may have been touched by the fiery preachers of the Great Awakening. Though subsequent Baptist memberships are not readily available, it isn’t too far a stretch to expect the Hollands passed along that spiritual persuasion for the next century-plus until Wiley P. was old enough to grasp it.
But the Hollands were not the only influence. Wiley Holland’s great-great grandmother Nancy Vandiver descended through a rock-strong Baptist family, too. Consider:
- Nancy was the daughter of Edward Vandiver—born in 1748 in Crock Creek in Prince George’s, MD—and Helena Frost Turley of Fairfax, VA. Edward moved to Fairfield District, SC, in 1768 and to Pendleton in 1795 some years after fighting the patriot cause in the Revolutionary War during which he served under Gen. Nathaniel Greene at Eutaw Springs. Helena Turley married Edward in the midst of that war in 1778 as his second wife; they said “I do” in Cameron Parrish, Loudon County, VA, and Nancy was the second of their six children. Vandiver Baptist roots show up early as Edward is listed as a charter member of Neal’s Creek Baptist Church in South Carolina. At age 83 Edward Vandiver died on Thursday morning, 20 July 1837, leaving (of his twenty-one children) a dozen sons, six of whom were Baptist preachers.
- Edward Vandiver was the son of George and Anna Harbin Vandiver. George was born in Prince George’s, MD, in 1727, and Anna was born in Maryland; both died in Virginia. Before that George was another George with the surname Vandevour who married Elinor Hollingsworth; both were born in Maryland though the elder George died in Delaware.
Did Edward learn his Baptist faith from his parents or grandparents? We don’t know. Again he could have or he, too, may have been overwhelmed with the evangelistic preaching of the day. Either way, these were strong Baptist genes and traditions being passed along!
That other Hollands were strong Baptists is easily discerned. For instance, there is another Baptist W. P. Holland in South Carolina overlapping the life of Wiley P. in Georgia. That W. P. was Willam Perry Holland, son of Elijah M. Holland who was also a descendant of Moses Holland. Elijah and William Perry were members of Neal’s Creek Church and are both buried there. Elijah, who owned a farm one mile from the church, was the community postmaster and kept the post office in a room attached to his home.
So what do we know about Wiley P. Holland whose ancestry may have predisposed him to Baptist preacherhood? When 1900 U.S. Census enumerator A. B. Hosch knocked on the door at the Joseph Holland home in June, Wiley P. was eight years old and the youngest of five children of a farming family in Hoschton District. Joe and Nancy Holland, who had ten children, were 50 and 51 years old with other children still at home aged 20, 17, 13, and 11. Ten years later when enumerator Charles Williams approached the farm in April 1910, the household included Wiley Preston at age 18, his parents, and paternal grandfather, 85-year-old Samuel M. Holland.
On 19 September 1915, Holland married Lillian Ma(i)e Baird, and the two were blessed with a son, Henry Horace Holland, on 4 August 1916, and a daughter, Damaris, on 17 September 1918. The couple was married in Hoschton where their daughter was born; their son was born in Winder. On 5 June 1917—about midway between the births—Holland registered for the draft. At the time he was of medium height and build with dark hair and brown eyes and employed on his father’s farm. In the next U.S. Census, Wiley and Lilly Holland lived at Braselton with their children. Wiley was a farm “helper” though his father had died three years before so it is unclear who he worked for.
Somewhere around then, Wiley Holland felt a call to preach which lead him that fall to enroll as a part-time “special” student at Mercer University in Macon—quite a distance from northeast Georgia. Did that mileage figure into his abbreviated educational experience or was advancing his education too much for a man supporting a wife and children? In spring 1921 when the Mercer yearbook, the Cauldron, was published, Holland was in Mercer’s School of Christianity.
The next year he was not a student though he shows up during as an ordained minister in the Atlanta Baptist Association as a member of Grant Park Church. He kept that status with ABA most of the decade. Georgia Baptist Convention Minutes show him with a mailing address at Monroe, GA, in 1928-1929, at Flowery Branch from 1930-1934, and at Braselton in 1935. There he remained until 1942 when he moved to Winder where the family lived until 1950, moving to Hull and living there until his 1958 retirement. Then he moved back to Winder. Holland’s pastorates included Academy Church in Burke County; Union Church at Winder; Union Grove; Bogart First Church; and Pleasant Grove at Hull. The Union Church history shows that in 1939 his annual salary was $202, thirty members joined, Sunday School attendance averaged fifty, and the church was wired for electricity. While he was at Bogart, the church history shows the congregation gathered for worship on the second and fourth Sundays of the month.
Holland retired the same year the Anderson (SC) County Historical Association erected a roadside marker highlighting his great-great-great grandfather Moses Holland’s devoted service. Not one to sit around idly, Wiley P. Holland imitated Moses Holland by continuing to preach. He held interim pastorates in the ensuing years and was for a while Winder First Church minister of visitation. In May 1971 the Winder congregation observed Wiley P. Holland Day, honoring him as pastor and friend to many over half a century.
On 6 July 1972, Holland, aged 81, died. Survived by his children and a brother—Samuel F. Holland of Clermont, NC—and six grandchildren, he was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Winder. The Georgia Baptist Convention meeting in mid-November at Savannah acknowledged his death in memorials presented by Appalachee Association.
Before, during, and after the time Wiley P. Holland loyally and compassionately served churches, numbers of other pastors with the same surname are listed in the annals of Georgia’s Baptists. Were they of the same lineage? Only more research can tell. If you’re a Holland and a Baptist in Georgia or South Carolina–or even Virginia–there’s a good chance your religious heritage is entertwined with that of this Baptist who came by his convictions honestly.
--Arlette Copeland, Special Collections Assistant
Sources:
Wiley P. Holland biographical file, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA.
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