By Spessard Stone
Mary Agnes Groover Holland was the daughter of a Lakeland, Florida physician and wife of Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Spessard L. Holland.
Dr. William Rowan Groover, father of Mary, was born August 1867, Columbia County, Florida. He was the son of Rowan Joseph Groover, a native of Georgia, Confederate veteran, and minister of the Primitive Baptist Church, and Julia (Douglass) Groover of Columbia County. In 1892 Dr. Groover received his degree in medicine from Southern Medical College, now the medical department of Emory University. He practiced medicine at Fort White until moving to Lakeland, Florida in January 1898 where he continued his practice. He also served as president of the Southern Financial Corporation and in 1923 organized Groover & Sons, Insurance Agents, and further was a citrus grower. Active civically, Dr. Groover was a member of the Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, Masons, Knights of Pythias, the American, State and County Medical Associations, American Legion, and the First Presbyterian Church. In Columbia County in April 1891, Dr. Groover married Mary Matilda “Mollie” Knowles, daughter of James J. and Elizabeth (Sandlin) Knowles. They had two sons, Arthur Van Dyke Groover and Morgan Groover, and three daughters, Sue Ella (Mrs. Roscoe N. Skipper), Mary Agnes, and Kittie Groover Loehr. (1)
Mary Agnes Groover was born July 31, 1896 at Fort White. Raised in Lakeland, she attended Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee.
In Lakeland, Florida on February 8, 1919, she married Spessard Lindsey Holland, and they had four children: (1) Spesssard Lindsey Holland, Jr., born c1920; married Elizabeth Jeanette Logan, Dorothy Durrance Bryan & Rita Hinchman McDaniel; (2) Mary Groover Holland, born c1925; married Jefferson Davis Lewis; (3) William Benjamin Holland, born c1929; married Claudia Croy & Lynn Smith Anderson; (4) Ivanhoe Elizabeth Holland, born c1933; married Augustus Henry King 111 & Richard Bellaire Craney.
Mary Holland died March 22, 1975, Bartow, Florida.
Herewith follows excerpts from three articles on the family:
Excerpted by Spessard Stone from the article by Maybelle Manning, Miami Daily News of March 30, 1941
Tallahassee, March 29-Once in a lifetime one finds an ideal family, with their faith intact, in a setting as perfect as if it had come from the pen of an imaginative writer. Our first lady of Florida, Mrs. Spessard Holland, called by that most lovely of names, Mary, fits into a mansion with true-mansion-lady beauty and charm...
(Shown at left is Mary's gown, c1941-45, Florida Dept. of State.) She possesses the sort of loveliness which imbues one with the feeling that she is proud to be pretty; that in the midst of her romantic existence, she is faintly conscious of being the heroine. Not only is she the leading lady of her family, but also with the entire population of aristocratic old Tallahassee.
Mary Holland belongs to Tallahassee. She has visited there since she was a young girl and many times has been a guest at the mansion where now she is the gracious chatelaine...
Arriving at noon, the sound of music greets us, some one playing in a dreamy and improvised manner, whistling a thoughtful accompaniment to “When I Grow Too Old to Dream.” Tip-toeing through the broad polished hall for a peep we found Governor Holland, himself, with his hat still cocked jauntily on the side of his head, home for lunch.
“This is the way Spessard always lets us know he is home,” said Mary. There’s nothing he’s ever heard that he can’t sit down and play.” In a room of regal proportions, furnished with warmly polished mahogany, a great crystal candelabra, the gleam of noble silver and the fragrance of flowers, we lunch. With a bang of roller skates, the children come home from school, suddenly pause with bowed heads as they find the blessing is being said. There’s Mary-Groover, just turned 16, who enjoys “sophisticated moods” every now and then, according to her brothers; Billie-Ben, 11, at the “beebie-gun” stage, and Ivanhoe, at the springtime age of seven and the glamour girl of Tallahassee-even Billie-Ben, with nonchalant honesty, tosses her this undisputed bouquet.
At lunch also is Mr. Jim Holland, whom the governor refers to simply as “brother.” Young Spessard-Lindsey, jr., 20, is at Emory university in Atlanta. He is an expert flute player, besides playing the tenor saxophone in the university’s symphony orchestra. All the Hollands are musical. Billie-Ben has for some time played the lead clarinet in the school band...
All the children, after true Southern custom, are called by their full hyphenated names at all times...
The governor, a born Floridian, has an ardent reason for his deep affection for this state, through the fact that his father, who was given up to die of incurable asthma, came to Florida as a last resort and enjoyed painless and happy years until the grand age of 87.
The favorite music at the government mansion parties is the A. and M. quartet, negro singers, who softly sing “Stroll Away” and “Kentucky Babe,” Mrs. Holland’s favorites...
Mary adores attics filled with rubbish, relics from a golden age, when folks saved memories. The third floor attic is filled with boxes and trunks, all of her memorabilia, which was the only thing she moved “from home” in Bartow....Mary has a beautiful clear voice, like a bobolink trilling in the sun. Her greatest joys is to sing solos in church...
Mary says she intends to use the mansion days and the next four years like magic carpets. Then she’ll try to memorize each one making it a part of her memorabilia...
The Tampa Tribune, February 6, 1969, page 16-A
The article, which reported on Senator and Mrs. Holland’s planned fiftieth wedding anniversary to be held in the committee room of the new Senate building in Washington, D.C., identified part of the then extended family:
“Attending the anniversary celebration will be Sen. and Mrs. Holland’s two daughters, two sons and their families. They are Mr. and Mrs. Jeff D. Lewis of Dog Island and their two children, Jeff Jr. and Mary, Mr. and Mrs. Richard B. Craney, Mr. and Mrs. William B. Holland of Winter Haven and S. L. Holland Jr. and daughter Gail.
“Also expected at the event are the senator’s sister and her husband, Capt. (ret.) and Mrs. Roy T. Gallemore of Bartow, their son and his wife, Cmdr. and Mrs. Gilbert Gallemore of Washington, D. C., and their daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Smith Jr., of Essexville, Mich.(2)
“Mrs. Frank Holland, widow of the senator’s brother, and her daughter, Mrs. John Harbeson of Winter Haven, are also expected.”(3)
Transcribed by Spessard Stone from the Tallahassee Democrat of Sunday, March 23, 1975
Grover Holland, 78, widow of a former Florida governor and senator, died Saturday at Bartow Memorial Hospital several weeks after suffering a stroke.
Her late husband, Spessard L. Holland, was Florida’s chief executive from 1941-45, and a Democratic senator 1946-71. He died in November, 1971, 11 months after leaving office.
A memorial service for Mrs. Holland will be held Tuesday at the First United Methodist Church in Bartow. She will be buried at Wildwood Cemetery.
Survivors include a son, Lindsey, of Melbourne; daughters, Mrs. Jeff Lewis of Dog Island and Mrs. Richard Craney of Bartow; 15 grandchildren and a sister, Mrs. Roscoe N. Skipper of Lakeland.
Mary Holland Park was named for her.
Hugh Wright on January 30, 2002 e-mailed of the family:
"I have a long acquaintance with both these families, having grown up in the Bartow area. Our family, travelling through Tallahassee shortly after Spessard became governor, visited the Holland family one evening in the old governor's mansion. The company I worked for here used the Holland and Bevis law firm for their legal work, with me taking things back and forth, so I saw them both frequently.
"Both the Holland boys are dead, but both daughters remain. Ivanhoe (Mrs. Richard Craney) lives here in Bartow, though I never see her out anywhere. Mary lived on Dog Island, off Carrabelle, the last I knew, but this information is several years old.
"Spessard, Jr., always called Lindsey by his family, was one year ahead of me in high school, as was his first cousin James Gilbert Gallemore, always called Gilbert. I knew Gilbert better than Lindsey, as he and I were active boy scouts together. Gilbert's father, Roy Trent, had graduated from Annapolis in WWI, and had served on submarines. You may remember an article about this in the Quarterly June, 1992.
"Gilbert's older brother, Roy Holland Gallemore, was the assistant scout master and taught us little boys many things. He went on to Annapolis, graduating about 1941 or 42. I went to engineering school for two years, joined the navy as an enlisted man, but then was picked for midshipman's school and became an officer. I went into submarines, trained for three months on one of the R-boats at Key West, just as pictured in the Quarterly article. Mine was the R-13, Roy T.'s was the R-14. After three months we were transferred to submarine officer's school at New London, Connecticut, and to my surprise there was Roy Holland Gallemore as a classmate! He had served a couple of years in destroyers in the Pacific. We went, separately to new submarines. On one war patrol my submarine stopped at Saipan to refuel. We had just taken the island, airstrips for the B-29s were under constriction, and there were quite a few Jap snipers still around. Going ashore for a drink, I bumped into Lindsey Holland, then a marine lieutenant. He said Roy had been there a week earlier!
"When the war ended both Roy's and my submarine were in Pearl Harbor being readied for the next war patrol. Our rest camp there was the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, courtesy Adm. Nimitz who was an old submariner himself. With the war over, I was transferred into division headquarters, and when I went to my room in the batchelor's officer quarters my roommate was Charles Gallemore, a cousin. A couple of month later, now on a different submarine but still at Pearl Harbor, Gilbert's carrier came in and he spent a day at sea with me. He later transferred into submarines too. Roy H. is retired as a navy captain and lives here in Bartow. "
(1) M. F. Hetherington, History of Polk County, 1928; Harry Gardner Cutler, History Of Florida Past and Present Historical And Biographical, 3 Volumes (Chicago and New York, 1923), Volume 2, pages 253-254.
(2) Roy Trent Gallemore, son of James G. and Ella (Trent) Gallemore, born Sept. 8, 1895, Salisbury, Mo. He came with his parents to Bartow in 1911. He attended Summerlin Institute and the U. S. Naval Academy. He married in Dec. 1919 Virginia Holland, and they had three children: Roy Holland Gallemore, James Gilbert Gallemore, and Virginia Gallemore Fram. Capt. Roy Trent Gallemore died Feb. 1977, Bartow, Fla. See History of Polk County.
(3) Frank L. Holland was born October 7, 1895 and died in March 1966 at Winter Haven, FL.
Newspaper articles, courtesy of Canter Brown, Jr.
January 26 & February 1, 2002