DeSoto County MsArchives Biographies.....Holmes, Finley March 24, 1802 - September 24, 1884 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ms/msfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Paul Holmes holmesp@cofc.edu March 7, 2012, 9:37 pm Source: AS I REMEMBER THEM --- Author: Irene Beasley Finley Holmes Born: 1802, March 24 in Columbia, SC Died: 1884, September 24 at Plum Point, MS on the homestead of Valley Grove. Buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, TN Father: Finley (Finlay) Holmes (Sr.) (b. 1765, County Down, Ireland; d. 1815, Columbia, SC - buried in Fairfield County SC) - arrived in America at Charleston, SC about 1785. Mother: Jane (Jenny/Jennie) Downs (Downes) Holmes (b. 1774, July 6 in Camden, SC; d. ~1835 in Talbot County GA) - Jane and Finley married while she was in boarding school in Columbia, SC. After her husband's death in 1815, she moved her family to Georgia, near Macon. Siblings: James Holmes (b. 1794, June 27 - Columbia, SC; d. 1854 - Talbot County GA), William Holmes (b. 1797, June 24; d. probably died before his brother, William T. Holmes, was born), Catherine Holmes Bryan (b, 1800, March 18, Columbia, SC; d. 1862, Talbot County GA), Robert Holmes (b. 1806, April 28 in SC; d. 1884, February 27 - buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, TN), William Thomas Holmes (b. 1810, November 11 in Columbia, SC; d. 1888, August 28 at Bellevue, Talbot County GA). Wife: Emily G. Raines (b. 1806, July 29 in Montgomery County GA; d. 1881, April 29 at Plum Point, MS on the homestead of Valley Grove; buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, TN) Finley met and married a Miss Emily Raines. They were married on December 17, 1823, in Bibb County Georgia. Finley was a "hard shell" Baptist and Emily was a "blue stocking" Presbyterian. They continued to live near Macon, GA, where young Finley acquired considerable farm lands. In the year of 1836, Finley decided to sell his holdings in Georgia and to take his family further West into a recently-admitted state that was often referred to as "Mississippi Territory." The previous move from South Carolina to Georgia in 1823 and now the move further West in 1836, from Georgia into Mississippi, seems to have been in keeping with a trend of the times; a general migration from the Carolinas to the states which lay further inland from the Atlantic. Finley Holmes with his wife and children traveled the long journey by carriage with their household possessions following in wagons, drawn by oxen. Upon their arrival in Mississippi, Finley bought several square miles of land from the Chickasaw Indians and started the construction of his new home which was called Valley Grove (a house of Colonial design built between 1845 and 1852 on land located in DeSoto County Mississippi near the Tennessee-Mississippi state line on Tchulahoma Road. The main house is no longer standing, but the land is now just north of the Stateline Road in Tennessee!). Finley and his wife, Emily, had a total of eleven [living] children. Five were born in Georgia. Six were born at Valley Grove. •Georgiana Holmes (b. 1825, d. 1846), first married Thomas M. Wood on October 1846; then married William W. Butts (or Bott), a farmer of DeSoto County MS and a Methodist minister •Robert R. Holmes (b. 1826, d. 1878), never married, died in Jefferson County AR •Alpheus Cadmus Holmes (b. 1828; d. 1881 - buried Walnut Lake Cemetery, Desha County AR), married Jane J. Carr (b. 1866; d. 1866 - buried Walnut Lake Cemetery, Desha County AR) - married October 22, 1857 • Finley Holmes (III) (b. 1832; d. 1849 - buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, TN), killed by accidental discharge of his own gun at age 17 • Lawrentine Holmes (b. 1835, d. 1866), married Sallie F. Herron on December 9, 1857 • Thomas A. Holmes (b. 1837, d. 1862), never married, died of poison ivy while serving in the army (CSA) - buried Walnut Lake Cemetery, Desha County AR • Francis Holmes (b. 1839; d. 1916 - buried in Bethlehem Cemetery, Shelby County, TN), married Elizabeth Kelley Clarke (b. 1841; d. 1929 - buried in Bethlehem Cemetery, Shelby County TN) on 15 December, 1866 in Hernando, MS • Abercrombie Holmes (b. 1842; d. 1890 - buried Walnut Lake Cemetery, Desha County AR), Letha Pickett (d. 1886 - buried Walnut Lake Cemetery, Desha County AR), a native of Smith County TN, and a daughter of Colonel Edward Pickett of St. Louis, MO; married second Lundie L. Tillar in February of 1889 in Desha County AR • Nathaniel Holmes (b. 1843; d. 1904 - buried Walnut Lake Cemetery, Desha County AR), married Flora Virginia Tillar on March 22, 1877 in Drew County AR • Marcia Elbertina Holmes (b. 1845), first married (October 24, 1866) Bertie Dekalb Treadwell (b. 1831, August 18; d. 1876, May 26); second married Mr. Moses W. Beardsley of Memphis • Winfield W. Holmes (b. 1847; d. 1897 - buried Walnut Lake Cemetery, Desha County AR), married Calista Antoinette Tillar (b. 1857, d. 1883), cousin of Flora Tillar (wife of Nathaniel Holmes) on October 24, 1877 in Drew County AR • Another child, Emily G. Holmes, died in infancy In the years before the war, Finley Holmes had amassed a large acreage of prime Mississippi and Arkansas farmland and had become a successful farmer. When he died at Valley Grove on March 24, 1884, at the age of 82, only one of his eleven children (Francis Holmes) was still at the old home. At his death he left farmland at Dumas and Walnut Lake, AR to each of his five (living) sons. Note: Plum Point, DeSoto County MS was located just below the Tennessee- Mississippi state line on Tchulahoma Road - so called because there was a plum tree grove there. In the early nineteen hundreds, there was a small general store which also housed the Post Office, a sign proclaimed the area as Plum Point, Mississippi. It was little more than a postal name, for this was countryside in every sense of the word, and houses were few and far between. Additional Comments: Biographical material presented here has been enhanced by information from family records, bibles, interviews, newspaper accounts of weddings and deaths, and other public documents for wills, land transfers, etc. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ms/desoto/bios/holmes18gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/msfiles/ File size: 6.5 Kb