TOMBSTONE TUESDAY: William Fontaine Hollamon

TOMBSTONE TUESDAY (May 13, 2025): William Fontaine Hollamon, Jr. was born on March 9, 1869, in Jasper, Texas, the 3rd child and first son of William Fontaine and Sarah Harrison Hollamon. By the time his younger brother Harry was born, the family lived in Williamson County, Texas. William graduated from Southwestern University and on November 3, 1897 married Mae Bond in Georgetown, Texas. Mae was the daughter of a Methodist minister and had been educated at the Alabama Female College. After their marriage, William taught school in Milford, Texas, for a while. Then in 1898 William and Mae, along with William’s parents and siblings and their families, all moved to Port Lavaca where William served as the superintendent of schools. William’s father died in 1902 and is buried in the Port Lavaca Cemetery. By 1910, William had retired as superintendent and gone into the real estate business and served as a county school trustee. In 1925, the Victoria Rotary Club sponsored the formation of the Port Lavaca Rotary Club with 13 charter members. The Port Lavaca Rotary Club celebrated their 100-year anniversary this past weekend at the same Beach Hotel at the corner of Main Commerce Streets where the charter members met. We can assume that William was one of those 13 charter members, as he served as the President from July 1927 to July 1928. In an April 1927 Victoria Advocate article, we find that William was a member of the “Citizens’ Committee” that worked with the Commissioners Court and similar committees in Refugio, Jackson and Matagorda Counties on Calhoun County’s part of the “Hug the Coast Highway” https://scholarworks.utrgv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi... which was being built from Houston to the Valley (today SH 35). It’s interesting to note that the article states that at that time in 1927, Calhoun County was the only county along the route that had not yet started working to pass a bond issue for their portion of the project, but more research shows that the county voters did approve a bond issue later that year with a 6 to 1 majority. 

William was a mason for many years, serving as master of the Lavaca Lodge No. 36 A.F. & A.M. By 1940, William was working in farming and ranching. During World War II, he was the chairman of the Calhoun County Ration Board that was responsible for distributing ration books and stamps to ensure fair allocation of limited goods like sugar, coffee, gasoline, and other essential items. https://www.nps.gov/.../food-rationing-on-the-world-war...

William and Mae had built a beautiful tile and stucco home at 311 N. Guadalupe St. in 1926 and although the couple had no children of their own, they opened their home to many young people. They helped raise Mae’s niece and nephew Mildred and Sanford Shofner, after the death of Mae’s sister Fannie in 1908. Fannie had married William Algee Shofner in 1987 in Williamson County, Texas and he was working in north Texas for a time after her death. William and Mae also took in Miss Lillian Green after the death of her mother, William’s sister Buelah, in 1919, and also Harry’s daughter Grace for a time after her mother death in 1926.

William passed away on February 5, 1956, a few weeks before his 87th birthday. His wife Mae had passed away 3 years earlier. The pallbearers and honorary pallbearers at his funeral are a real Who’s Who of Port Lavaca including H.C. Wehmeyer, Ray Custer, W.H. Bauer, Dr. S.W. Lester, H.C. Smith, Victor Patterson, James McSpadden, Larry Dio, W.P. Regan, W.F. Tanner, Leonard Fisher and others. William’s brother Harry had worked for the railroad and farming and had returned to Port Lavaca in 1926 after his first wife passed away. Harry lived the rest of his life in Port Lavaca, passing away in 1963 and is buried in Greenlawn Cemetery, but the rest of his family lived their lives and passed away elsewhere.

You probably recognize some of the names mentioned here in this article: Algee, Shofner and Hollamon are all streets in Alamo Heights Section 1 developed by this family in the late 1940’s, and presumably named for W.F. and Harry Hollamon and William Algee Shofner. Recall that William was actively involved in real estate for a time here in Port Lavaca. Shofner Addition between S. Indianola and S. Lavaca St. was developed by his niece Mildred Shofner in 1948, after the passing of her father in 1935, and she named Mildred Street parallel to Live Oak after herself. Mildred Shofner Farms, Inc. still owns much of the farmland south of Alamo Heights Subdivision today and also many acres north of Maxwell Ditch Road as does the Hollamon Land Co. 

References: Victoria Advocate April 18, 1927; Victoria Advocate September 22, 1927; 

Port Lavaca Wave June 25, 1953; Port Lavaca Wave Feb 9, 1956; www.ancestry.com; Port Lavaca Rotary

Tombstone Tuesday is written and compiled each week by Jody Weaver and Sheryl Cuellar of the Calhoun County Historical Commission, sharing the people and stories behind Calhoun County's history.