Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/501

 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

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elected mayor of Suffolk in 1885, and served to 1887, in which year he became common- wealth attorney for Nansemond county, an office he held until 1908. when he was elected to the \'irginia state senate, holding his seat in that body until 191 1 and relin- quishing it to take his place in the national House of Representatives. He has sat in the Sixty-second and Sixty-third Congresses and has served as a member of the commit- tees on post offices, post roads, census, elections and territories. Mr. Holland was from 1883 to 1885 chairman of the Demo- cratic County Executive Committee, and has also held membership on the Democratic State Executive Committee. Since 1892 he has been president of the Farmers" Bank of Xansemond county, at Suffolk. He is a trustee of Elon ( North Carolina ) College, and belongs to the ^lasonic order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. His college fraternity is the Beta Theta Pi. He married. November 26, 1884, Sarah Otelia Lee. born in Nansemond county. Virginia, in i85o, died in 1897, daughter of Patrick Henry and Joanna (Rawles) Lee. Their children were: Lee Pretlow, of whom fur- ther; Elizabeth Otelia, educated in Hollins College. Roanoke, \"irginia.

Lee Pretlow' Holland, son of Edward Everett and Sarah Otelia ( Lee ) Holland, was born in Nansemond county. Mrginia, September 2, 18S5. After attending the public schools he became a student in Elon College (North Carolina), where he re- mained for three years. He completed his general education in Washington and Lee L^niversity. at Lexington, Mrginia, matricu- lating in 1903 and receiving his A. B. de- gree in 1906. The following three years he spent in the legal department of the same institution and was graduated with the LL. B. degree in 1909. In the following year he was admitted to the practice of law in Nansemond county, Virginia, and since then he has been associated with his father in legal pursuits. While a student at Wash- ington and Lee University, Air. Holland was elected to membership in the Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity, and the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. His political sympathies are Democratic, and he belongs to the Christian church.

Frank Harrell Redvi^ood, M. D. The

earliest record found of a Redwood is that

of Abraham Redwood, who w^as born in Bristol, England, in 1665. He was a sea- faring man and captain of a ship trading between London and the West Indies, in 1687 he married, on the island of Antigua, Mehetable Langford. through whom he came into possession of a valuable sugar plantation, Cassada Garden, with a large number of slaves. He had ten children, and in I7LS- after the 'death of his wife, he moved with them to Salem. [Massachusetts, seventeen years later moving to Newport, Rhode Island. He married (second) Mrs. Patience (Howland) Phillips, who bore him four daughters and a son. The Redwoods of Rhode Island, New York. Philadelphia, and Virginia, descend from Abraham (2) Redwood, a son of his first wife, and from \Mlliam Redwood, son of his second wife. Abraham (2) Redwood was a wealthy Quaker with a town house and a country seat evidencing the wealth and taste of the owner. His country seat. "Redwood Farm," he bought for six thousand five hundred pounds from Daniel Coggeshall in 1743. This farm was first settled in 1639 by John Coggeshall. of Newport, one of the first settlers of Rhode Island. His botanical garden was stocked with curious foreign and valuable domestic plants, which were free to his friends' enjoyment. He founded "Redwood Library" in Newport in I747> ordering books to the amount of five hun- dred pounds from London as soon as the building was completed to receive them. It was the Redwood Library that rendered reading fashionable in Rhode Island dur- ing that early period and sowed the seeds of the sciences that made the inhabitants of Newport, if not a more learned, a better read and a more ambitious people than those of any town in the colony. The rever- end and learned Dr. Ezra Stiles was the librarian for nearly thirty years, and often declared that he owed his literary taste to the Redwood Library, the gift to Newport of Abraham Redwood. Abraham and Martha (Coggeshall) Redwood had six children, including a son. Abraham (3), and Jonas Langford, whose son, Jonas Lang- ford (2) Redwood, married a Miss Holnian, of Virginia, and ha'd a son. Holman, who married Martha Christian, of Middlesex county, Mrginia. Their son, \\'illiam Hol- man Redwood, was born in New Kent countv, Virginia.