Holley

ments and his carelessness in safeguarding his
own interests he was unable to produce vouchers
for $30,000 of the total, and in order to make up
the deficiency, he surrendered his small estate.
An investigating committee exonerated him of
all charges of misappropriation, but, although
the state later returned his property, he was
never adequately compensated for his great serv-
ices. He had retired and was devoting himself
to horticulture when he was again brought into
public affairs by the abduction and murder of
William Morgan followed by the anti-Masonic
movement which swept New York state and
culminated in a convention at Albany. He draft-
ed the address of that convention to the people
of the state and was one of the New York dele-
gates to the National Anti-Masonic Convention
which assembled in Philadelphia in 1830. The
Address . . . to the People of the United States
(1830), eloquently demonstrating that Masonic
societies were inimical to the principles of a free,
republican government, was the work of Holley
as the committee chairman. In 1831 he became
editor of the Lyons Countryman and for the next
three years waged a vigorous campaign against
Freemasonry. In 1834 he went to Hartford to
edit the Free Elector for the Anti-Masons of
Connecticut, but after a year he returned to New
York and settled near Rochester.

Holley first began to take a practical interest
in the slavery question in the winter of 1837 and
was soon convinced of the necessity of organized
political action. At the anti-slavery convention
held in Cleveland in 1839 he moved that a nomi-
nation of candidates for president and vice-presi-
dent be made, but the motion was badly defeated.
He returned to New York and secured the pas-
sage of a resolution by the Monroe County anti-
slavery convention in favor of a distinct nomina-
tion, and a few days later he was again success-
ful at a larger convention held at Warsaw, which
convention nominated James G. Birney as its
candidate. The formation of the Liberty party in
April 1840 at Albany was thus in a large meas-
ure his achievement, for he had succeeded in
transforming the moral and religious indignation
of the Abolitionists into effective political action.
On June 12, 1839, Holley issued the first num-
ber of the Rochester Freeman which he edited
until it failed shortly before his death.

[Elizur Wright, Myron Holley; and What He Did
for Liberty and True Religion (1882) ; A Life for Lib-
erty: Anti-Slavery and Other Letters of Sallie Holley
(1899), ed. by J. W. Chadwick; Wm. L. Garrison,
1803-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Chil-
dren, vol. II (1885); The Rochester Hist. Soc. Pub.
Fund Ser.t vols. I-III (1922-24); W. F. Peck, Semi-
centennial Hist, of the City of Rochester (1884) ; Hist.
Colls. Relating to the Town of Salisbury, Conn., vol. II
(1916); the Nation, Mar. 9, 1882; files of the Roches-

Holliday
ter Freeman in the library of the Buffalo Hist. Soc.;
and manuscript letters in the Holley collection, N. Y.
Hist. Soc.] FiM_n>
HOLLIDAY, CYRUS KURTZ (Apr. 3,
i826-Mar. 29, 1900), promoter, railroad builder,
the son of David and Mary Kennedy Holliday,
was born near Carlisle, Pa. His progenitors, of
Scotch-Irish descent, were prominent in the
founding of Hollidaysburg, Pa. After gradu-
ating from Allegheny College at Meadville, in
1852, he planned to enter the legal profession,
but he soon forsook the law to engage in business
enterprises. He was successful in his early ven-
tures in Pennsylvania, but farther West, he
thought, his capital and talents could be used to
greater advantage, and in 1854 he moved to Kan-
sas. He settled first at Lawrence, allying him-
self with the Free-state men. Convinced that
Kansas would become a free state, and that the
time was ripe for founding the future capital, he
organized a party at Lawrence and led it up the
Kansas River to select a suitable site for such
a city. In November 1854, the party selected the
location, staked out the townsite, and organized
the Topeka Town Company, with Holliday as
president. Five years later, in 1859, Holliday
appeared before the Wyandotte constitutional
convention and succeeded in having his city de-
clared the territorial capital. He established a
home in Topeka and built up various business
undertakings, and during the slavery troubles in
Kansas he worked consistently for the Free-
state cause.
He had long dreamed oŁ the possibility of
building a railroad along the old Santa Fe Trail,
but railroad schemes were legion during the
fifties and he found it difficult to interest people
in his project His energy and enthusiasm, how-
ever, finally won him a following and his per-
sistence achieved results. While a member of
the Kansas territorial council in 1859 ne drafted
the bill chartering the Atchison & Topeka Rail-
road Company (later the Atchison, Topeka &
Santa Fe Railroad) and secured its enactment.
When the company was formed pursuant to the
charter, Holliday was made president. Later he
drafted the bill which passed Congress in 1863,
providing a land grant for his road, and the fol-
lowing year the Kansas legislature authorized
the counties through which the road would pass
to issue bonds and subscribe stock in the rail-
road company. Finally the bonds were voted
and sold, and in November 1868 the ground was
broken for the first construction. Holliday re*
mained a director of the railroad until the time
of his death. In addition to his other activities
he was one of the organizers of the Republican