The earliest Holmes ancestor on the family tree is Nathaniel Holmes, born around 1690 in Ireland. Nathaniel married Jane Hunter and the couple spent many years living in Ireland. Their son Nathaniel was born in Ireland on April 25, 1719. Eventually both he and his father would move to the United States, but the exact date is unknown. They came to the New England area, one of the making them part of one of the few branches of the family tree that comes to through somewhere other than Virginia.
The second Nathaniel married Elizabeth Holmes in 1743 and in 1764 their son Robert was born in Londonderry, New Hampshire. He came to Lexington, Kentucky in the 1780s, where he made a living for himself as a woodworker, specializing in the making of spindles and Windsor chairs. In Kentucky, Robert married Susanna Chinn, who had also recently moved to Kentucky, around the year 1793. The Holmes lived in Lexington for a few years, and many of their children were born there. Eventually though, Robert purchased land in Scott County, and the family moved to the estate that would become known as Elmwood. Many of the Holmes children married into prominent families in Scott County, including the Webbs, Johnsons, and Millers. Robert lived until 1833, when he became a victim of a cholera epidemic that swept through Central Kentucky. This was one of the worst cholera epidemics in Kentucky's history, and Lexington was hit especially hard.
One of Robert and Susanna's daughters was Susan Holmes, born in February of 1804 in Kentucky. On February 6, 1826, Susan married Mitchum Boswell Webb, born September 5, 1802, in Scott County, Kentucky. Susan and Mitchum had two daughters, Mary Boswell and Bettie Chinn. Bettie, born on February 1, 1832, married John Allen Higgins, and they became the parents of Alline Higgins Headley Rogers, the grandparents of Elisabeth Headley Garr and Frances Headley Carruth, and the great-grandparents of Elisabeth Garr Lawrence, Charlotte Garr Schubert, Frances Carruth Kerr, and Allen Higgins Carruth.
On the far left is the location of Elmwood, the home built by Robert Holmes. To see more family properties, go to the Family Houses Map page.
Photographs
