Uncle Mart and Holland Family

Martin Holland and Rosille Rosetta King

Martin Holland was my 2nd Great Grandfather, but was generally known to most people as Uncle Mart.  He was married to my 2nd Great Grandmother, Rosille Rosetta King.

Grandpa Mart was quite a character, and was always entertaining someone with his antics.  There are many stories about him. 

The story below tells a little bit about the Holland family history as well as Grandpa/Uncle Mart.


The following "Wagon Train" story was provided via the research of Cora Burton, and was written by an unknown author in 1984: 
"In either 1875 or 1876 about five families of Hollands who were all farming in Kentucky decided to join a wagon train headed for California. It is known that at one time before the Civil War the Hollands owned two-thirds of Wolfe County, Kentucky. 

Uncle Mart, his wife and children, Wesley, Harrison, and Lou Alice then three years old, were about to eat their breakfast when the wagon train pulled up. Rossille later recalled to her granddaughter, Bertha, how Mart didn't give them time to eat. He said to get the kids and go. She picked up Lou and left a new pair of shoes sitting on the stair step and Mart left a fine breed mare standing in the stable. 

Also known to be on the same wagon train with them were Mart's father and mother, several brothers including Elisha and wife, Sarah, and probably one sister. It is unknown how many families or different families were on it but it is estimated the Hollands were maybe two years on the road before eventually settling in Arkansas.

It is passed down that Lou Alice remembers her dad telling her in 1930 when he (Uncle Mart) was 104 years old and visited Texas, the wagon train stopped close to Dallas and camped in the Trinity River bottom and the river was dry. While they were camped there they were robbed by white masked men. The robbers took all the men's money including Uncle Mart's. Some of the women had money hidden on themselves and he remembered Sarah and Elisha's money.

Some of the familes that didn't have any money to continue to California stayed there and founded a part of what is now Dallas. Although one of the Holland families must have stayed, the others decided to return to Kentucky. When this small wagon train reached Washington County, Arkansas, Mart's father, Jack and family decided to remain there. Mart and Lish and their families continued on to Mountain Home, Baxter County, Arkansas. Lish and Sarah's last known child, Mollie, was born in 1879 in Arkansas. Soon thereafter Lish, Sarah, and all their children except the oldest son, Taylor Holland, went back to Kentucky. Taylor married Sallie Faut on December 17, 1891, and moved before or after that to Oklahoma to settle and raise his family there. Mart and Rossille also had a child born in 1879. William Franklin was born on the fifteenth of November in Mountain Home. They also had twin boys (or girls Arminnnie & Armannie?) born in Baxter County and both died when they were small. They are buied at the Hort Cemetery on the Old Highway 5 - southeast of Mt. Home on the James Baker place. A son Floyd Lonzo born in February, 1888, and their last child a daughter, Julia Ann born on January 24, 1891, concluded their family of six children.