HOLMES, THOMAS GALPHIN
HOLMES, THOMAS GALPHIN [pictured on horseback], physician,
was born in 1780, at Silver Bluff, S. C., and died at Tensaw, Baldwin
County, 1852; son of John Holmes and wife, 
Miss
Galphin, the former a native of Ireland who came to the colonies about
the timeof the struggle for independence and engaged in the fur trade
with George Galphin, whose daughter he married, and who lloaned to the
colonial congress $20,000.00, towards equipping the fieet of John Paul
Jones, and loyal throughout to the cause of independence. Dr. Holmes received
his academic education in the old field schools, under private tutors,
and read medicine under practicing physicians. He migrated from his native
state to Alabama, which was at that time, about 1800, a part of the Mississippi
Territory, and settled in the Tensaw neighborhood, now Baldwin County,
where he practiced his profession for fifty-two years. He was in the service
of the United States as assistant surgeon in the Creek Indian and War
of 1812. In politics he was a staunch "Jeffersonlan Republican," and a
Baptist by profession of faith, although never connected with the church.
Although a student he was never an author, though through his love of history he assisted Pickett in collecting data for certain chapters of his history of Alabama. Married: January 4, 1820, in Monroe County, to Elizabeth, daughter of George P. and Elizabeth Weakley, of South Carolina. Children: 1. Sarah Margaret; 2. George Weakley; 3. Mary Elizabeth, m. Henry Ausphrea Hand; 4. Thomas Galphin, jr., m. Lucinda Vaughn Byars; 5. Hannah Elizabeth; 6. Martha Julia; 7. William Ervin; 8. Origin Sibley, m. Nannie Boyles, Finchburg, Monroe County.
Last residence: Tensaw, Baldwin County.
Source: (8), page 833