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Note: m was nine years old when his mother died and nearly eleven when a new "mother" moved into the home. Even though his name was John Thomas he was called Tom, some called him Tommie. Young Tom was born into economic deprivation. Tom's father returned to a different Georgia when he returned from service in The War Between the States. Even though Thomas inherited land from his father Elisha, Southern and Georgia farming and economics were changed forever. A grandchild of Thomas reports that he was bankrupt by the time he married Francina. Thomas and his family lost the land he inherited on what is now called North Bridge Rd and rented land not far away at the corner of Callaway Rd and what has become Holt Rd. This is the farm Tom remembered as home and where he spent his childhood playing with his brothers and sisters and doing farm chores. I do not know how much education Tom was given. It must have been very little for he could not read and write. What he did have was a strong work ethic. My mother's first memories of Tom finds him on New Hope Rd in Fayette county where he was either a tenant farmer or rented land. Some time a long the way he learned to be a carpenter. He farmed there until the mid-twenties when he moved to College Park to be a full time carpenter. Before that he would ride the train to Atlanta on Sunday evening to work as a carpenter during the week and return on Friday afternoons to see his family and do his farm work. His sojourn to College Park and Atlanta was only temporary for I know he returned to New Hope Rd during part of the thirties. He too, struggled with a depressed cotton market, the boll weevil, and the Great Depression. Not until World War II did he find constant work off the farm. His daughter, Estelle Holt McCleskey, in an oral history describes his beautiful crops and describes how hard he and his family worked on their farm. The family was active in New Hope Baptist Church. Estelle remembered that the traveling ministers almost always ate Sunday lunch with them after service. I remember visiting New Hope when they would have "all day singing". They were still using the old white building and I remember the abundance of food and how delicious it was. This would have been just after World War II. During World War II Tom Holt worked as a carpenter for the government, the Army, building needed barracks and other military buildings. Not all of his government employment was spent in Georgia for I know he spent some time in North Carolina. He never returned to Fayette county after the war. There was an urgent need for housing for the returning service men and their families and Tom moved to Tanner Road in College Park. He first rented from Mr Tanner and later bought a small lot from him and built the home he lived in until he died in 1968 at age ninety. That home is no longer there. The property was purchased by Hartsfield International Airport and is now covered by a runway. In the latter part of his career he no longer wanted to climb a latter so he began laying hardwood floors. Most of his life was spent before Social Security so he continued to work into his late seventies. After my grandmother's death in November 1945 my grandfather was extremely lonely. He married Donnie B Jones Holt, the widow of his nephew, L Andrew Holt. She was also the step daughter of his sister Genia Holt Jones and had known her since she was a child. They had twenty-two years of marriage before he died in 1968. He died at age ninety.
Note: My grandfather Tom Holt was the ninth child born to Thomas and Nancy Kite Holt. Two younger siblings were born before Nancy died at age forty-three. His father then married Francina Cochran and thy had one child, a total of twelve. To
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