Eliza Holman

Eliza Holman was born near Clinton, Mississippi, enslaved by the Rev. John Applewhite, a preacher who held only three people: Eliza and her parents. Her mother was the cook and housekeeper; her father did the field work, drove the coach and everything else. In 1861 the Applewhites moved to Texas by ox wagon and settled near Decatur. She remembered the long trip, crossing a river on a floating bridge, the preacher and his wife quarreling the whole way, and waking under a tree swarming with army worms.

About a year after they arrived, the preacher's daughter Mary married John Olham, and Eliza was sent to live with them. Mary was kind, but Eliza said Olham was cruel: he worked her nearly to death and whipped her for the least thing. Her father urged her to run away. He ran away himself, and she never heard of him again.

After the surrender she had nowhere to go, so she stayed with the Olhams until she was sixteen, then found work in Jacksboro. About nine years after the war she married Dick Hines at Silver Creek and left him after five years. She later married Sam Walker, a cattle worker in Fort Worth, who died about 1917, and then Jack Holman, who died in 1930. When interviewed at 82 she lived at 2507 Clinton Avenue in Fort Worth on a $12-a-month state pension and said she was done with marrying.