Briana Michelle Holmer was born on Sept 30, 1988. A home birth, delivered by her father in the small village of Tina, Missouri, Briana would become the middle child of seven in a happy and active American family. Her father soon moved the growing clutch to the countryside and built a home on 80 acres of green hills and timberland in Livingston County, near Kansas City, Missouri.   She nurtures a close bond with her siblings: Andrea Carol, Erica Denise, Sheena Roxanne, Monica Richelle, Logan Keith, and Jenna Kay.

In her youth, Briana spent her time training and showing her horse, painting, and playing sports at school. She played basketball, softball, and was a jumper in track and field. She also enjoyed hunting, fishing, boating, ice-skating, skiing and archery with her father and siblings. The family enjoyed the benefits of healthful living on wild game, fresh fruit and organic gardening with their mother. At the age of 15, the 5’ 11, green-eyed strawberry-blonde was spotted by a model scout while shopping for a pair of riding boots in town. She soon began traveling to and from St. Louis to walk for local runway shows. She modelled part-time while finishing high-school and competed as an international high-jumper before moving to New York City in 2008, where she began work as a runway and luxury lingerie showroom model for Empreinte, Van De Velde, Prima Donna, Marie Jo, Andres Sarda, Rigby & Peller, Splendid Intimates, and Aubade Paris. In 2022, she moved to Paris and began a leisurely tour of Europe.

Briana studied Design Foundations at Savannah College of Art and Design and Neuroscience and Behavior at Columbia University. Today, you’ll find her somewhere in the world on horseback, perusing art, history and philosophy, searching for a good reason to stop.

FAMILY

Briana’s father, Clint Robin Holmer, was a sixth generation American of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Viking ancestry and an avid outdoorsman, sportsman and business owner. Her mother, Louana Ruth McCumber, is an OB nurse who traces her ancestral roots to the founding of America and highland Scotland. Her maternal grandfather, veteran and gunsmith, William Oscar McCumber’s lineage descends from William Macomber who settled in Duxbury, Massachusetts in 1638. His father, John, was a member of America’s founding Mercers guild in Bridport, England and descends from the McComies of Glenshee and Perthshire and the Highland Mackintoshes.

William, “the cooper” and his brother John, a carpenter, along with William’s wife and child, Ursula and Thomas, sailed to Plymouth Colony in 1630 on Captain John Grant’s ship, the Handmaiden, and became the sole pro-generators of hundreds of Macombers who united with Mayflower and other early descendants over five generations in colonial America. William and Ursula birthed seven children on Duxbury Island in Marshfield, Massachusetts. William III’s son, Samuel, married Mary Tripp in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and birthed eleven children, following the six children she birthed by his older brother, Joseph. Mary was the granddaughter of General James Cudworth, who’s father decends from Edward I’s daughter, Elizabeth of England and mother decends from the House of Plantagenets and the Norman Bigods and Mowbrays, who appeared as witness to the Charter of Liberties and were signing Magna Carta Barons.

Plymouth, notably, was the only early colony to establish peaceful trade agreements with the Native Americans and oppose involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, for which we still celebrate with Thanksgiving tradition. The McCumber family has gracefully maintained these early American values over thirteen generations. Over thirty-five of her mother’s direct ancestors served in the Revolutionary War, including Colonel Spencer Ball and Lieutenant Benjamin Ball, the maternal uncle and first cousin of George Washington and his guide, Levi Covenhoven. Thirty-two Macomber brothers and cousins held prominent leadership positions.

Following the siege of Yorktown in 1781 and the end of the Revolutionary war, two of Samuel’s grandsons migrated to the New York Hudson River Valley and the new frontier of the Holland Purchase in Upstate New York. Construction of the Erie Canal began, while Samuel II McUmber and his wife, Mary Cornelia Fisher, via New York from Scotland’s Clyde Valley, birthed thirteen children between New York City, Erie, PA, Gallia, OH, and Oswego, NY, home of the Oswego Canal, the Port of Oswego, and Fort Ontario, which would later serve as a safe haven for WWII refugees. The family also resided in Duanesburg, Schenectady County, NY, known for its dairy farms and was at that time, the rail hub of America and supported the Underground Railroad route running through the area. Samuel’s brother Richard settled nearby in Galway, Saratoga, NY. Sam and Mary spent their remaining years together in Darthmouth. Their son, Hiram McCumber, born in New York City, moved to Gallia County, Ohio where he married Catherine Romine and birthed nine children before serving three years for the union in the Civil War alongside Hiram Ulysses Grant.

Maternal great-grandfather, Lowell Alvin O’Neal descends from Captain Daniel O’Neal and Eleanor Noel, who arrived to Northumberland, Virgina in 1640. Daniel’s parents, Christopher Neal and Anna Osborne Moore, were born in County Limerick, Ireland. Daniel’s grandson, John married Mary Dew and settled on Hatteras Island, in Dare County, North Carolina. The O’Neals lived four generations in North Carolina, before William O’Neal migrated to Wilson, Tennessee, where his son, John, was born in 1811. John and his wife, Martha Freeman, moved to Mason County, Illinois and birthed seven children. Their youngest son, Philander O’Neal, joined the Illinois Calvary and served the Union for four years as Corporal during the Civil War.

Following the Civil War, both the McCumbers and O’Neals settled on the fresh river basin of northwest Missouri where they have remained peacefully rooted for many generations. Hiram McCumbers son, William Hooper, married Mary J. Ball, and their son, William Oscar married Louise Gerling-Ostermeier from North Rhine, Germany and birthed six children. Their son, Harold Ervin McCumber married Lula Marie Womack, who’s family arrived to Missouri from Henrico, VA, via Kentucky, and descends from Richard Womack, born in 1600 in Kent, England, and the 8th-11th century Burgundian lineage of Latin Emperor John of Brienne, France and Empress Berengaria of Leon, Spain.

Philander O’Neal’s son Lewis, married Jennie Wagaman-Hornung of German/Swiss/American-Scottish ancestry and birthed five sons in Bogard, Missouri. Their son, Lowell Alvin O’Neal married Ruth Bertha Mueller whose grandmother, Bertha Manske-Dobberpuhl’s family arrived to Germantown, Wisconsin from Prussia in 1850, and grandfather, Wilhelm Mueller, by way of Minnesota in 1869, from Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. Lowell O’Neal and Ruth Mueller birthed fourteen children in Carroll County, Missouri. Their daughter, Carol Ruth O’Neal, married William Oscar McCumber and birthed one son, two daughters, and fourteen grandchildren, all of whom spent their childhoods together in Dawn, Missouri.

Today, the extended family maintains over 500 acres of farm and timber land in Carrol and Livingston County, Missouri, and most importantly, thirteen generations of the practiced values that make a solid and satisfying American family and home.