Nancy Holland, unheralded Grimes County woman

Cecil E. Burney, a descendant of earliest Grimes County settler Francis Holland, and a student at Stephen F. Austin State University, wrote a “scholar works” entitled, “Home of Heroes: The Story of the Holland House.” It was published Oct. 1971 East Texas Historical Journal.

Burney descended from Francis Holland’s eldest of two daughters, Sarah, who married William Burney in 1825. Burney accompanied the Hollands into Texas in 1822 and acquired a land league next to the Hollands on April 6, 1831. The Burneys would have 11 children.

The Francis Holland’s youngest child and daughter was Nancy. She is the topic of this Sandbar column. Nancy comes to the fore front as one of the most unheralded women of Grimes County.

Nancy, born about 1819 in Ohio, was 3-years-old when she came with the Holland brothers’ families, Francis and William, in 1822. They stumbled across the Andrew Millican cabins along Three Mile Creek that became known as Holland Creek. The brothers bought all the Millican cabins and improvements and were granted side by side “Original 300” leagues on August 10, 1824. The brothers were married to Buck sisters.

Francis and his wife had six children. Nancy had four brothers, James, Tapley, Frank and William. Both their parents and brother William, a handicapped child, died in 1834. Nancy would have been 15 years old at the time of their deaths.

Within another four years, by 1838, all Nancy’s three other brothers were also dead. In 1836, the surviving three brothers, James, Tapley, and Frank all volunteered for the Texas army. They participated in skirmishes around Bexar and Concepcion. When James contracted measles, Frank brought him home to the Holland cabin where he died in the fall of 1836. Meantime, Tapley remained with the Army and died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. Frank, working on a surveying expedition, was killed by Indians in the spring of 1838.

Nancy, at the age of 19, then became the sole owner of the “reported one fourth of the initial league that included the family’s home and improvements” that had become known as Hollandale. She married widower William Berryman in 1835 and he farmed the Hollandale property. Berryman was born in North Carolina about 1795. By 1819 he was in Memphis and married to Rebecca Powell. A daughter, Sarah, was born in 1822. In 1834 he made the trek to Austin’s Colony with his wife dying in Harrisburg before he and his daughter settled in the Anderson area. Nancy and William became parents of three children, John, Susan, and William.

Nancy’s husband served the Grimes County Greys with the Hood’s Brigade and died at home on January 10, 1863. She never married again.

Nancy’s community generosity was well known throughout Grimes County over her many years at the Holland House. Burney states that “For many years after the Civil War, Grimes County and area officials often visited the Holland House as a result of Mrs. Berryman’s generosity. Due to the economic conditions, bonds were hard to obtain, and Mrs. Berryman served as surety on many of the bonds that were required of public officials. She made no distinction between political parties, and when a newly elected official found that he could not obtain a bond elsewhere, he made the trek to Mrs. Berryman’s.”

Nancy died at the Holland house in 1880. A Berryman granddaughter, Susan, married Henry Schumacher. They had a son, William T. Schumacher, born June 4, 1859, who inherited the Holland home upon Nancy’s death. Many owners later, a Houston woman purchased the Holland House relocating it to Chappell Hill, a most historic home allowed to escape Grimes County.

(Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more info and membership).