There isn't anyway I can post all of this so I will have to post only certain parts. If anyone is interested in the entire information you can email me off list and I will send  it to you. The reason I am posting this is because many Holloday researchers claim John Maershall Holloday, who is my 7th great grandfather, say he married (1) Elizabeth Lewis (2) Elizabeth Brocus. _-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   SOME GENEALOGICAL NOTES For the information of younger decendants who with the clues herein preserved, collect additional facts, supplementing this brief record of our name. Complied by Alexander Quarles Holladay Richmond, Va January 1901   "Our name Halyday, Holyday, Hollyday, Holliday, Holladay, for all these are same, with temporary or local variations of spelling, is one of the oldest of British surnames. It was certainly known on both sides of the Tweed more than seven hundred years ago, and it is equally certain that it was first known on the North side of that historic border river, and those who bore it seem to have been of Pictish blood, through the origin of the Pictish race is uncertain and obscure. Our Virginia ancestor, Captain John Holladay, who settled in what is now Spottsyvania County, Va. in 1702, often signed his name "Holyday", and is so named in various official papers. The name first appears as that of a spt or clan, occupying the valley of the river Annan, in the district of Gallaway. In 1240 Walter Holladay is recorded in the Exchequer Rolls, as Lord of a manor in St. Botolphs in Kent. In 1278, William Halliday is recorded as possessing the manor, Trevil, in Kent. In 1298, Thomas Halliday and in 1305, John Holladay, represented Bedford in Parliament. The English Parliament of today, only dates from 1295, when burgesses were elected for the first time. Very early in the 14th Cent;ury, Gerard Holyday and four other Holydays, were recorded as landholders in the Hundred of Lackford in Suffolk, and still others in the Hundreds of "Wardeboys and Caldicote, in Huntingdonshire, and in Hundred of Bampton Pogys, in Oxfordshire. In 1338, John Holladay of Pontetract, was summoned to attend King Edward III, with twenty bowmen to be paid by himself, to assist that King against the Scots. In 1415 Thomas Holladay of Pontefract commanded five hundred archers at the Battle of Agincour, in Sir John Shirley's Division. In 1470, Walter Holladay, called "The Minstrel" a younger son of the Laird of Corehead, became master of the revels to King Edward IV, who in that year granted to this Walter the Minstrel, the coat of arms used by the Holladay family in England and Virginia. Just here, with the chieftain who had formally assumed the family name of Holyday, an ancestor of the Minstrel, had his castle and strong tower near the source of the river Annan, a few miles from the present town of Moffat, and its ruins may now be traced at the spot still known as the Corehead, by the inhabitants of that vicinage. Walter Holladay, the Minstrel, had one son, Henry, to whom he left the estate of Mincin Hampton, This Henry, besides his elest son, who inherited his landed estate, had a younger son named Edward. Edward in turn, had a son, William, who became an eminot and successful London merchant, and Married Sara Brydges, aunt of Sir John Brydges, created Baron of Chandos in 1570, an ancestor of Sir Edgerton Brydges, the late unsuccessful claiment of the peerage as Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. The sons of William Holladay and Sarah, also bnecame ominent as men of business in London; Leonard becoming Lord Mayor in 1605, and was knighted by King James I the same year. Alderman William Holladay was the first chairman of the United East India Company, a conclusive proof of his high standing with the great merchants and finaciers of London. Sir Leonard Holladay married Anne winhold or Wincot, of Langham in Suffolk. Their son John married Alice Ferrars, and they in turn had a son, John Holladay of Bromley in Middlesex who married Mary Rolt, daughter of Henry Rolt of Daretn in Kent.    One Sir John Pexall, a man not much liked or trusted, but of sufficient capacity and force to acquire knighthood as one of the Royal High Sheriffs, and bring himself into some importance as a man to reckon with, was also adroit enough to capture the desolate little Brocas heiress as a bride for his oldest son, who took the name of Brocas.Their son, who became Sir Pexall Brocas seems to have been weak, worthless, and prodigal. He held the Brocas seat, a fine old place called Beaurepaire, but with his deathe had not only squandered one of the finest fortunes in England, but had sold the curios and much coveted office of Master of the Royal Buckhounds, which ahd been the hereditary property of the Brocas family for nearly three centuries. This ignoble Sir Pexall had several sons, one of whom died in battle, fighting galantly for CharlesI. Another is supposed to have been the William Brocus mentioned as the planter of a vineyard, perhaps the first one, in the early years of the colony in Virginia. The absolute ruin of his surviving sons was complated as in many another case by the pitiless devastations of war. For a generation after the Restoration, one modest house of the name seems to have held together, that of a worthy clergyman of the Church of England. a grandson or great grandson of the unworthy Sir Pexall, the Rev. Richard Brocas, rector of Corhamton. When he died, his household, unpretending as it had been, fell into the general family ruin, broken to pieces, and his children became wanderers; a tragedy only too common in the England of that day. The spectacle of and old house, for a long time powerful, stately, and splendid, suddenly blighted to the ground and consumed in the fiery furnace of civil strife. One of the children of this clergyman, a son named Richard, found his way to London, and beginning at the bottom, entered into mercantile life, and like another Richard, this famous Whittinton, at last achieved success, and with it as it is said, Knighthood and the Lord Mayoralty of London. Here comes in the tradition, for it is no more thattradition with no positive or authoritative evidence to prove it, for the sake of which this slight chronicle of the House of Brocas has been written. The story is that Richard Brocas had a sister, Elizabeth, and that long before Richard had made his career in London, perhaps even before the break up and dispersion of his fathers family, an attachment had grown up between the pretty pennyless Elizabeth Brocas and John Holladay, a younger son of John Holladay of Bromley and Mary Rolt, his wife.   All we know for certain is that in 1702, he was located in what, eitheen years later, was organized into a new country, Spottsylvania, so named in honor of Colonel Sir Alexander Spottswood(Lieutenant Governor, to the Earl of Orkney, Governor, but non-resident); the most enterprising and useful of all the colonial vice-roys of Virginia. There in the Virginia forrest, about 20 miles from the falls of Rappahannock, when the town of Fredericksburg, not yet thought of, was to grow up, John and Elizabeth made their new home, acquired and easy competance, and lived many years hosptiable and respected, and there for six generations, the violets and periwinkles have been growing over their dust in the old graveyard at Bellefonte, on North East Creek.   I find this to be getting rather lengthy and while my Father has written some rather interesting thing about our ancestor John Holladay, who first settled in Spotsylvanis, I presume the foregoing is what you are more especially intereste in. Very Truly yours (Signed) C.B. Holladay   Marianne Dillow