Holcomb

chusetts House, and from 1834 until his death he
served as justice of the peace for Hampden Coun-
ty. Holcomb was married in November 1808 to
Gillett Kendall, by whom he had seven children.
After her death in 1861, he married Maria Hol-
comb. He died at Southwick.

[Jesse Seaver, "The Holcomb(e) Genealogy" (1925),
mimeographed copy, in Lib. of Cong.; Am. Jour. Sci.t
Jan. 1833, Jan. 1835 J Jour, of The Franklin Inst.t Sept.
1834, July 1835, Aug. 1836, Nov. 1836; Frank Leslie's
Chimney Corner, July 27, 1867.] F. A.T.

HOLCOMB, SILAS ALEXANDER (Aug.
25, i8s8-Apr. 25, 1920), lawyer and Populist
politician, was born in Gibson County, Ind., the
son of John C. and Lucinda Reavis (Skelton)
Holcomb. His early life was that of the normal
farmer's boy, involving hard work, especially in
summer, and country or village school in winter.
As a youth he taught school for four years, but he
never realized his ambition to attend college, for
in 1878 his father's death left him the family
breadwinner. The next year, accompanied by his
mother and his brothers and sisters, he emigrated
to Nebraska, settling on a farm in Hamilton
County. In 1881 he began to read law with a
Grand Island law firm, and in 1883 opened a
law office of his own in Broken Bow. He was
married on Apr. 13, 1882, to Alice Brinson of
Mills County, Iowa. In the course of his prac-
tice as a country lawyer his sympathy with the
debt-ridden pioneer farmers developed rapidly,
and in 1891 he was nominated and elected dis-
trict judge on a third-party ticket. Two years
later the Populist party, now strongly organized
in the state, named him for the state supreme
court; and in a lively three-cornered fight he
demonstrated his ability as a public speaker and
a vote-getter, although he lost the election. In
1894 Populists and Democrats, brought together
by their common devotion to the cause of free
silver, made Holcomb their joint nominee for
governor, and with the help of the normally Re-
publican Omaha Daily Bee, he won a remarkable
triumph, considering the fact that otherwise this
was a distinctly Republican year.

Nebraska, like other frontier states, was a
debtor community. It had been developed almost
entirely with capital borrowed in the East; and,
afflicted now by low prices and crop failures, its
people found their financial obligations exceed-
ingly difficult to meet. Indeed, extremists among
Holcomb's supporters were not averse to schemes
savoring of debt repudiation. Conservative busi-
ness men in the state were much exercised, there-
fore, lest the election of Holcomb should be in-
terpreted as the beginning of a war on outside
investors that would make future borrowing im-
possible* When in 1896 the Fusionists were able

Holcombe

to reelect him and to choose a legislature upon
which he could depend for support, the anxiety
of the business interest knew no bounds. As it
turned out, however, Holcomb proved to be the
conservative leader of a radical party. No legis-
lation calculated to demoralize business was al-
lowed to pass; but instead the administration of
the state institutions and the state lands was
greatly improved, dishonesty in the handling of
the state's finances was relentlessly prosecuted,
and generally sounder financial policies were
adopted.

When Holcomb retired from office as gover-
nor in 1899, ke was promptly elected to the state
supreme court, on which he served creditably for
six years. He then resumed the practice of law,
but in 1913 accepted appointment as member of
the Board of Commissioners of State Institu-
tions, a place which he held until 1920, when the
failure of his health made it necessary for him to
resign. With his powerful physique bent and
broken by disease, he went to live with a daugh-
ter in Bellingham, Wash., where he died shortly
afterwards.

[A. E. Sheldon, in Nebr. State Jour. (Lincoln), Apr.
27, 1920; Albert Watkins, Hist, of Nebr., Ill (1913),
540; messages to the legislature, Nebr. Senate Jour.,
1895, 1897, 1899; T. W. Tipton, Forty Years of Nebr.
(1902) ; "In Memoriam, Silas Alexander Holcomb/*
104 Nebr. Reports; Who's Who in America, 1920-21.]

J.D.H.

HOLCOMBE, CHESTER (Oct. 16, 1844-
Apr. 25, 1912), missionary and diplomat, a de-
scendant of Thomas Holcomb who came to Dor-
chester, Mass., in 1630, and the eldest son of the
Rev. Chester Holcombe, a Presbyterian minis-
ter, and Lucy (Tompkins) Holcombe, was born
in Winfield, N. Y. His father, born in Sand
Lake, N. Y., served a number of churches in his
native state. Young Chester's mother, who had
intended to be a foreign missionary and before
his birth had consecrated her son to that career,
taught him to look forward to it as his life work.
He attended Union College, from which he was
graduated at the early age of seventeen with Phi
Beta Kappa honors. For several years after his
graduation he taught in the high school at Troy,
N. Y., in a normal school at Hartford, Conn., in
Norwich, Conn., and in a normal school in
Brooklyn, N. Y. In the meantime he read the-
ology, and in 1867 was licensed to preach by the
Presbytery of Lyons, N. Y. During 1868 he
traveled in Georgia as a missionary of the Amer-
ican Sunday School Union, and in that year was
ordained. The year following with his wife,
Olive Kate Sage, and his brother Gilbert, he
sailed for China as a missionary of the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,
arriving in Peking in the spring. His brother

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