Prominent attorney and city court solicitor, Colonel Sidney Holderness Sr. (1864–1939) came to Carrollton from Whitesburg to practice law in the late 1800s. In 1896, Holderness married Ada Clare Long (1871-1940), daughter of famed Carroll County statesman Benjamin McFarland Long (1827-1903). In the early 1900s, Holderness had a building designed and built for his law office by the Atlanta architectural firm Morris and Butt. Pioneering female attorney and author Betty Reynolds Cobb served as a secretary to Holderness during this time period and the position allowed her to secretly study law as she prepared to take the bar exam. The building, located at what is currently 201 Newnan Street, was owned by the Holderness family until the 1970s when Sidney Holderness III sold it to Reuben M. Word.

Around the time he established his law offices on Newnan Street, Sidney Sr. commissioned the Morris and Butt architectural firm to design his family’s home at 48 Dixie Street (currently 301 Dixie Street). Sidney Holderness Sr. and Ada Clare Long had three children: Ben Scott Holderness (1895-1896), Clare Holderness (1897-1943), and Sidney Holderness Jr. (1899-1974). Clare Holderness married Brooks Oliver Pittman and the two lived in the home on Dixie Street after Sidney and Ada passed away. After Clare’s death in 1943, Brooks Pittman married Margaret Sprout Long (first cousin to Clare and Sidney Jr.) and had two daughters, one of whom lives in the home on Dixie Street as of 2014.

Sidney Holderness Jr. attended Oglethorpe University, Harvard University Law School, and the University of Virginia and, practiced law in Atlanta, Tampa, and Carrollton.

In addition to his status as a prominent figure at the turn of the century in Carrollton, Sidney Holderness Sr. operated the farm of that belonged to his father William T. Holderness in Douglas County. Sidney Sr. and Sidney Jr. operated the farm together. The Holderness farm was often referred to as the “Rabbit Farm” by family members, a name that derived from the rabbit hunting enjoyed by the family on the property.

Before his death in 1939, Sidney Sr. persuaded his son to abandon the practice of law and to take on the complete management, control, and operation of the family farm. After much persuasion, Sidney Jr. became a full-time farmer with the agreement that his father would equip the farm with sufficient stock, tools, and implements to operate it and would leave the farm to him after his death. However, Sidney Sr. failed to leave any written record of this father-son agreement and, at the time of his death, left a will appointing the First National Bank of Atlanta as executor and trustee of his estate. In 1940, Sidney Jr. and his sister Clare petitioned against First National Bank and, by 1945, were granted the full land and mineral rights to all properties owned by their father. Petitioning on behalf of Sidney Jr. and Clare during this process was Alexander Stephens Mitchell, brother of Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell. (Note: Sidney Holderness III provided supplementary information regarding the properties owned by his family members in a phone interview with the Graduate Research Assistant, Brian Crews, conducted in April 2014.)