Mary Louisa Oni Cornwell Holler

[May Cornwell]
[Lynwood]

Born: April 29, 1871, Ches­ter Coun­ty, South Car­o­lina.
Died: February 2, 1951.
Buried: Laur­el­wood Cem­e­te­ry, Rock Hill, South Carolina.

May’s par­ents were Will­iam Jesse Will­iams Corn­well (rul­ing elder at Plea­sant Grove Pres­by­ter­ian Church, and the com­mun­i­ty phy­si­cian) and Mar­ga­ret Le­vi­ca Walk­er.

May at­tended the Ches­ter Fe­male In­sti­tute in Vir­gin­ia, where she wrote un­der the pen name "Lynwood." She grad­u­at­ed with hon­ors and was the com­mence­ment speak­er. After gra­du­a­tion, she became a teach­er, first for a lo­cal school, then for an orp­han­age (she al­so taught Sund­ay school for 63 years). In De­cem­ber 1896, she mar­ried Ad­lai Ell­wood Holl­er, a Meth­od­ist min­is­ter; they had eight child­ren.

In 1945, the state of South Car­o­lina named May Corn­well Holl­er as the state’s Mo­ther of the Year, stat­ing, "Through sac­ri­fice, pray­er, and de­ter­min­a­tion, she and her hus­band man­aged to send all eight child­ren to college and en­joyed the pri­vi­lege of see­ing all gra­du­ate." The gov­er­nor of South Car­ol­ina said:

"Yours is a life of ser­vice—ser­vice to your God, to your coun­try, to your state, and to your com­mun­i­ty; ser­vice to your church, and to your home; service to friend and to stran­ger; ser­vice for the sheer joy of serv­ing. Yours is a life of sweet­ness and gra­cious­ness, of strength and kind­ness, of de­vo­tion to du­ty. Yours is a life sym­bol­ic of the fin­est South Car­o­li­na wo­man­hood."

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/h/o/l/holler_mloc.htm