(A Short Account of the Lives of Martin and Margaret Holloway Brantingham by Mary Logue Clapsaddle, Their
Grandaughter.)



THE HOLLOWAYS
January, 1936

Jesse Holloway [was] employed as a teacher in the Shenandoah Valley; there he fell in love with one of his pupils, Sarah Painter, a little Quaker maiden of Winchester or near there and they were married and settled near Stevensburgh in Culpepper Co., Va. They were married during the Revolutionary War. Jesse Holloway...was...a Friend or Quaker as they were popularly called...[and because] of his so-called "Quaker" principles he would not go to war, and was "conscripted"; that is, he had to forfeit a certain amount of his possessions; the conscripting officer took a saddle horse, saddle and bridle, a feather bed and all of great grandmother, Sarah Painter Holloway's set of Pewter dishes, probably given her by her parents when she was married.

This Holloway family continued to live in Culpepper for several years. Eight children were born to them; Hannah, Joel, Aaron, Susan, Margaret, David, Eunice, and Joshua, at least the first five being born in Va. Maybe 7 of them. Of this large family, my grandmother Margaret was the fifth. Her father Jesse Holloway taught a select school in Stevensburg, where most of the pupils were the children of neighboring "planters", generally the sons as the daughters were often taught at home. Grandmother went to school there with her father as teacher. She sometimes told of incidents which occurred back there in that old Virginia school before 1805, and how they played at noontime in the pine groves near-by. The Holloways owned and lived on a farm and Jesse sometimes employed free Negroes to work for him; if slaves were ever employed by him, he was careful to hire them on a holiday, when the slave and not the master would get the pay.

The nearest neighbors on either side of the Holloways were slave owners, Gabriel Gray and John Gray each having 100 slaves. Grandmother used to like to go over to the Gray's in the morning after the slaves had gone to work in the fields and run down through the "quarters" a narrow lane with cabins on either side and there she would see the little darkies lying there asleep in the ashes on the hearth, to keep warm. Their mothers were out in the fields or up at the mansion house at work.

But although the planters, who were the so-called quality folks of the country side were disposed to be sociable with the Holloways, because the Holloways were intelligent, (Mr. H. being a teacher and the Friends having an "innate" culture of their own). Jesse Holloway and his wife saw with the good deal of uneasiness, the growing disposition of these slave-holding people to mingle with their family; and their Quaker principles forbade them to have anything to do with the nefarious business of holding other human beings as slaves. Already one Roswell Baldwin, a former slave owner, a widower and somewhat older than Hannah, the eldest Holloway daughter had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her. Accordingly Jesse Holloway sold his farm, his comfortable home in an old, well-established community and prepared to remove to the uncleared forest lands in Ohio.

I think he made the first trip to Ohio on Horseback, probably in the fall of 1804, and purchased land of the government and on the 21st day of April 1805 the family started in a covered wagon over the Blue Mountains fording or crossing rivers and making their way through the unhewn forests until just three weeks later they landed at Billie Hunt's barn, just west of where Salem, Columbiana Co., was later built. They had come all the way in their covered wagon and were accompanied by Joe Huens, a teamster who brought an extra load of goods for them. At night they stopped where there was a tavern or a private home where they could obtain inside accommodations for their grand-mother, mother, Sarah Painter Holloway and the girls, Hannah, Susan and Margaret. (Eunice and the youngest boy, Joshua were not yet born.) A feather bed was always carried in at night for the grandmother and mother but the men and boys slept in the wagons....No doubt that grandmother, strong, lively fourteen girl that she was, heartily enjoyed this 3 week covered wagon trip from Culpepper County, spent riding, standing on the hounds of Joe Huen's wagon, listening to his stories and songs.

Just three weeks after leaving the old home in Virginia they arrived at their destination in Ohio, April 12, 1805. The farm which Jesse Holloway had purchased from the government was located just east of where Salem now stands, no town there then. As there was no house on their land the Holloways had secured the use of Billy Hunt's barn until they could put up a building.
Great grandfather Jesse Holloway and great grandmother Sarah Painter Holloway saw Salem's beginning and it was quite a little town even in their day but I suppose its greatest gain in size and population was after the coming of the railroad and the building of shops. The Holloways became influential citizens and the young people added much to the life of the neighborhood gatherings. This family was prominent in the affairs of the Friends Meetings. Margaret (our grandmother) especially, being among the most popular girls and always in demand as one of the waiters at the Quaker weddings.

Before 1820 Mr. Street established a store and needing an experienced clerk he obtained the services of Martin Brantingham, a young Englishman who had come to Ohio, with some relatives from Philadelphia. Young Brantingham who after being educated in an English Boarding School, had been in the mercantile business as a clerk, proprietor, collector, riding over a good part of England on horseback collecting for a firm with which he had been connected was gladly secured by Mr. Street because of his experience. So in due time Martin Brantingham and Margaret Holloway met and were married. Martin came up into what was then Stark County in this northeastern Ohio and secured from the government one half quarter section or 80 acres of land a quarter of a mile east of the present village of Marlboro. He engaged men to build a cabin, make a clearing and dig a well on his newly acquired farm. After a duly authorized wedding in the Friend's meeting house at Salem, Columbiana County, Martin and Margaret Brantingham journeyed up through the wilderness to their new log cabin home, which they found waiting for them in a very crude state. Places for doors and windows had been made in the sides oft he cabin but were without anything in them. The very first evening there, William Pennock II who had settled here in 1810, where Roy France now lives, [on the west side of the road that leads north toward the present Marlboro Cemetery], only the house stood back came with an invitation for these new people to accompany him home for the night, especially for Margaret to do so. The open condition of the cabin made it necessary for Martin to stay to protect the goods. However Margaret declined the invitation, and hung up quilts at door and window places to shut out the wild animals, especially wolves which howled around through the woods.

This was in 1821. Martin Brantingham, who had been born in England, educated in an English Boarding School and received business training in a wholesale grocery store there where a ton of coffee was taken off a shipboard to be roasted every week, found himself marooned here in the backwoods of Ohio with no knowledge of a woodcraft or of farming in Ohio or America and with a very healthy fear which the howling of the wolves would always arouse in him; however he was a man and took his part bravely. Many times Margaret, my grandmother has told how she could beat him chopping, and that she had seen the blood running down the ax handle when he did much chopping. There was a little log schoolhouse on the side of the hill, just east of the Brantingham place which the young people of the neighborhood attended in the winter. Martin Brantingham sometimes taught this school in the winter; he was a very excellent scholar, French, Latin, Mathematics, English writers, etc. Schools then were generally subscription or select schools, also students would assist on the farm in the summer to pay for schooling in the winter. The public school system was not yet established. Because of his knowledge of the French language, Martin Brantingham was often in demand as clerk at public sales in and around the French settlement of Harrisburgh, but his French was book French not the "patois" so common. In time a road was cut out to the east through the forest past the Brantingham home. Three children were born in the home. John who afterward married Hannah Carr; Mary who married Mordecai Hayes Logue and Sarah married William Pennock.

Martin Brantingham passed away in 1849. The son John bought the place and lived there for awhile; his mother Margaret also resided there as her dower was to be there her lifetime. After a while she requested her daughter Sarah Pennock and her husband to buy the place and live with her, which they did; she lived with them the rest of her life. William Pennock and Sarah moved to the old home about 1853, Margaret Brantingham lived there with this daughter and son-in-law until May, 29, 1884 and died aged 93 years and 1 mo. And 8 days having been born April 21, 1791 in Culpepper Co., Va. William Pennock passed away April 6, 1914 and Sarah Pennock April 14, 1915. The place has always been owned and occupied by some member of the family since its purchase in 1821.

Martin Brantingham:
b. 3 Jan 1788 Darlington, Durham England
d. 31 Oct 1849 Marlborough, Stark Co., Ohio (Buried in the old Quaker Cemetery)
Came to Philadelphia in 1816 on the "Bristol Factor"
Lived in Salem and taught school until his marriage in 1821. Spent the rest of his life in Marlborough.

ALLIANCE WEEKLY REVIEW, Wednesday, June 4, 1884
DIED.
BRANTINGHAM.- May 24, 1884 Margaret Brantingham, aged 98 years 1 month and 8 days.
Deceased was one among the early settlers of Marlboro Township. Moving as she did with her husband the week after they were married and settling with him in the woods, together they worked and struggled in early life, amid the Adversity of the wolves and many other hardships with which our forefathers had to contend; but amid all their difficulties they persevered and succeeded in making for themselves a very comfortable and pleasant home, upon which she lived the balance of her days, a period of nearly sixty five years, her husband having died over thirty years ago. She was a member of the Society of Friends, a kind and good neighbor, espeically in sickness, for which no doubt she received a rich reward in the care that was taken of her by her son in law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Pennock and their children. She lived to that period of life know as second childhood, often not knowing those of her own household. Her descendants, unlike many at her advanced age, were few in number, having but two children living, seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren--seventeen in all. Thus our aged ones are passing away. Peace to their memory.
"Thus one by one they are leaving the shores of time,
And we trust in the same ratio they enter the heavenly clime."