Tombstone Tuesday ~ Jean HOLLAND, died 1768 in Londonderry (now Derry), New Hampshire

This tombstone was photographed at the Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry, New Hampshire.

HERE LYES THE BODY

OF JEAN HOLLAND

DAUGHTER TO STEPH^N

HOLLAND AND

JEAN HOLLAND DE-

PARTED THIS LIFE JANRY

10^TH 1768 AGED 7 MONTHS

7 DAYS

Stephen Holland was born about 1733 in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.  He was a member of Roger’s Rangers and was wounded at the battle of Fort William Henry and wounded again at the battle of Quebec.  He received a pension for her service and wounds, and removed to Londonderry and lived on a plot of land in East Derry across from the present day First Parish Church.  Colonel Holland opened a tavern here.

He married Jane/Jean Stinson around 1751 and they had nine children live to adulthood.  Jane/Jean is the only one buried in Derry (then known as Londonderry, New Hampshire). 

In 1773 the town of Londonderry proclaimed allegiance to Governor Wentworth, an appointed Royal Governor during the midst of pre Revolutionary War unrest. Holland was suspected of being the author of this proclamation. When the town of Londonderry called a town meeting to send delegates to the Exeter Congress that same year, Holland, as Justice of the Peace, ordered the meeting closed.  Holland was a very unpopular man while the rest of Londonderry’s inhabitants were patriots. Some suspected that Holland was a British spy.

To save face Holland stood up at a town meeting in 1775 and proclaimed his allegiance to the patriot cause.  The men at the meeting voted they were “satisfactory for his conduct” and a month later they elected him as moderator in place of the usual moderator, Matthew Thornton, who was at the Provincial Congress.  On June 18, 1775 Holland secretly went to the seacoast to recruit a militia of 200 men to assist the British.  He even signed the Association Test in 1776, which swore allegiance to George Washington.  He had fooled the town one more time!

Later, in 1778, he was found out and his property was confiscated and sold by the Committee of Safety.  On the same day the following other men were banished, too:  Richard Holland, John Davidson, James Fulton, Thomas Smith, and Dennis O’Hala.   There was a Captain Stephen Holland in the Prince of Wale’s American Volunteers in 1782.  His final burial place is unknown (and probably not in the Derry or Londonderry area!) 

You can read more about Colonel Stephen Holland “Spy Master” at this link to an article written by Richard Holmes, the Derry Town Historian:  http://www.londonderrynh.net/2014/08/stephen-holland-spy-master/75199

The recantation of Stephen Holland:  http://amarch.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A83278

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Tombstone Tuesday ~ Jean HOLLAND, died 1768 in Londonderry (now Derry), New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted  July 26, 2016, (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/07/tombstone-tuesday-jean-holland-died.html: accessed [access date]).