The surviving portion of Mary McCoy‘s Journal, from December of 1907 through 1927, is available for viewing here. Although it consists primarily of her recording of mundane events, it also contains mentions of important dates in the lives of various family members, neighbors and friends and has helped to resolve some uncertainties about the origins of family photographs among other minor mysteries.
Mary Eugene Hoylman1 was born the second child and first daughter of John Jordan and Jane Virginia (Marshall) Hoylman. She is said to have had a few years of formal education in rural southwestern Virginia. She would have been nine years old at the outbreak of the Civil War. Family lore has it that she sometimes traveled around with her father as he provided medical care during and after the war, and that it was this experience that led her to become a midwife.
Following the early death of her mother in April of 1865, Mary’s father remarried and moved the family several miles west from their Lick Creek farm to Trap Hill in what had become West Virginia as a consequence of the war.
How and when she met William Anderson McCoy2 (apparently always known as Anderson or “Ance”/”Anse”) is unknown.3 What is known is that their first child, daughter Texas Derensy, was born in March of 1869. The 1870 census has Mary and Texas at the home of John Jordan Hoylman. In that census, Ance McCoy is shown still living with his parents and siblings elsewhere in West Virginia leading to uncertainty about his relationship with Mary at that time. There is conflicting information about their wedding. In the 1910 US census, Mary and Ance stated that they had married in 1868. No documentation of this has been found. A marriage record from Lawrence County, Kentucky, neighboring Pike County where Ance had been born and raised, is dated 5 Oct 1872. While the name of the bride in this record is clearly “Miss Mary E Hoylman,” the groom’s name can be read as Andrew McCoy or Anderson McCoy. Their second child, Ida Alice, was born in March of 1874 in West Virginia. Willie followed in 1875 in Wayne County WV, which is adjacent to Laurence County, Kentucky.
Between the birth of Willie and their next child, Gertrude, in 1878, the family moved along with Mary’s father and siblings to south-central Nebraska. Later she would tell stories about traveling down the Ohio River. The family settled and homesteaded in Silver Lake Township, Adams County, Nebraska. Her father, brothers and sister Cora did the same. The rest of the children were born at this location and, at the age of five or six, Willie died during a diphtheria epidemic. The full family consisted of:
–Texas, born in 1869 in West Virginia (Greenbrier County)
–Ida born in 1874 in West Virginia (probably in Wayne County)
–Willie born in 1875 in West Virginia (Wayne County)
–Gertrude born in 1878 in Nebraska
–Milton born in 1879 in Nebraska (named John in the 1880 census but Milton thereafter)
–Julia born in 1883 in Nebraska
–Sidney born in 1886 in Nebraska
–Geneva born in 1889 in Nebraska
All of the Nebraska births occurred in Adams County. The children attended school in a building on grandfather Hoylman’s farm.
Mary’s father moved further west with his second family and died in Lewellen NE in August of 1891. Just a few months later in January of 1892, Ance and Mary sold their farm. The children continued in school at least into 1893. At that point, they moved east to DeSoto in Washington County, Nebraska, where Mary’s sister Cora was living prosperously with her husband, Oliver Bouvier, one of a family of original pioneers to the area.
Mary kept a journal of sorts for many years. When she began and ended it is unknown, but we have the entries from December of 1907 through 1927, over 400 type-written pages transcribed from small snippets of paper she had at hand and which she rolled up and tied into bundles. The entries are generally mundane and of little interest, but they do give a picture of life at that time and note important events in the lives of family, friends and neighbors. A few pieces of information in the journal were essential in piecing together the history of her ancestral families.
Following the move to DeSoto, Mary worked as a housekeeper for various neighbors and as a midwife in that part of Washington County. As described by their daughter Julia, Ance and Mary lived in a log cabin on the banks of DeSoto Lake (no longer in existence). The family was not together there, however. In the 1900 census; both Milton and Sidney are shown living with other families in the area.
Ance and Mary lost their second son, Milton, to an accidentally self-inflicted shotgun blast while duck hunting in 1901. Around 1920, daughter Geneva and her husband Morris Reichenbach moved to Lincoln NE where Morris had become the superintendent of the state fair grounds. Mary was to move there and spend the rest of her days, while Ance remained in Washington County, usually with daughter Julia and her family. Over the years she endured the loss of another child, Ida, in 1921, and the departure of her only remaining son, Sidney, for California. Ance died in 1922, Mary in 1931.
- Sometimes spelled Hoyleman. Mary’s grandfather spelled it Hoilman. His immediate ancestors among the other Pennsylvania “Dutch” (actually Deutsch, Germans), used Heylman, even going so far as the archaic Hëylman. Its origin today would be considered Heilman. ↩︎
- Whether Wlliam Anderson McCoy was intentionally given the same names as a neighbor, William Anderson Hatfield who would later become infamous as “Devil Anse”, is unknown. Yet the coincidence is striking, especially as they both went by “Anse”. Hatfield was a cousin of an Ephraim Hatfield, who would later marry Anderson McCoy’s eldest sister, Elizabeth McCoy. ↩︎
- What appears to be true is that Mary’s father and future husband both enlisted in the Confederate army at the same location, Gauley Bridge, Virginia, within a week of each other and, thus, quite possibly, crossed paths. McCoy was noted to be AWOL in Greenbrier County VA (home of the Hoylman family) in December of 1861. Hoylman was AWOL from December 11 of that year. ↩︎