Holmes

a survey of the southeastern section of the three
original counties (Philadelphia, Bucks, and
Chester), and drafted a Map of the Province of
Pennsylvania, which was first published in Lon-
don about 1687. He was also a member of the
first Assembly of Pennsylvania, which met at
Upland (Chester), Dec. 4, 1682, a member of
the Provincial Council, 1683-86, and for a short
time in 1685 and 1686, acting-president of the
Council and acting-governor. He served on
many important committees, including the com-
mittee that drafted the Frame of Government of

1683 and the committee that was appointed in

1684 to consider the boundary dispute with Lord
Baltimore, the proprietor of Maryland. He was
interested in Indian affairs and took part in the
negotiation of several Indian treaties. Accord-
ing to John F. Watson, one of these treaties,
concluded in 1685, while Holme was presiding
over the Council, was the basis of Penn's claim
to the city of Philadelphia and the adjacent coun-
try as far west as the Susquehanna (Memoirs of
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. Ill,
pt 2,1836, pp. 131-40). Holme visited England
in 1688-89 and again from 1690 to 1694. In the
year of his second return to the province he was
appointed one of the commissioners of property.
He died on his plantation in Dublin township,
Philadelphia County, Pa,, in March or April
1695.

[Oliver Hough, "Capt. Thos. Holme, Surveyor-Gen,
of Pa. and Provincial Councillor," Pa. Mag. of Hist,
and Biog.j Jan., Apr., July 1896; A. C. Myers, Immi-
gration of the Irish Quakers into Pa., 1682-1750
(1902); Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pa,, vol.
I (1852); W. R. Shepherd, Hist, of Proprietary Gov-
ernment in Pa. (1896); Penn MSS. in the Pa. Hist.
Soc-l W.R.S.

HOLMES, ABIEL (Dec. 24, 1763-June 4,
1837), Congregational clergyman, historian, was
born at Woodstock, Conn., and died in Cam-
bridge, Mass. His father, David Holmes, served
as a surgeon in the Revolutionary War, David
was descended from John Holmes, an early set-
tler of Woodstock, and married Temperance
Bishop, of Norwich, Conn. When Abiel Holmes
was fifteen his father died, and he himself entered
Yale College, from which he graduated in 1783,
having joined the College Church in his sopho-
more year. After a visit to the South, following
his graduation, he was ordained at New Haven,
Sept 15, 1785, with a view to ministering to a
Congregational Church in Midway, Ga. The
Rev. Levi Hart's sermon at his ordination, which
was presided over by the learned President Ezra
Stiles [q.v.] of Yale, bore the title "A Christian
Minister described, and distinguished from a
Pleaser of Men." His ministry in Georgia,

Holmes

where his health was imperfect, lasted until June
1791, and was broken by a period of teaching at
Yale (1786-87). In 1790 he married Mary, a
daughter of Ezra Stiles. Soon after his final
return to New England in 1791 he was called to
the pastorate of the First Church in Cambridge,
Mass., where he was installed Jan. 25, 1792, and
served as minister for thirty-seven years. In 1795
both his wife and her father died. Left childless,
Holmes was not left without occupation, for
Stiles had bequeathed to him "no less than forty
volumes of the valuable manuscripts" collected
"by an extensive and remarkably inquisitive cor-
respondence." These provided not only abundant
material for The Life of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D.,
which Holmes published in 1798, but also an
impetus towards the important work of his own
by which he is best remembered. In 1805 the
first edition of this work appeared in two octavo
volumes, under the title, American Annals; or a
Chronological History of America from its Dis-
covery in MCCCCXCII to MDCCCVL A sec-
ond edition, published in 1829, was entitled The
Annals of America, from the Discovery by Co-
lumbus in the Year 1492 to the Year 1826. These
volumes, as the first attempt at an extensive
orderly history of the country as a whole, marked
an important step in American historiography.
They consist largely of a chronological recital
of facts, amassed with a scholar's care from a
great variety of sources, manuscript and printed.
It was in keeping with the interests of Holmes
that from 1798 to the end of his life he was a
highly productive member of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, and from 1813 to 1833 its
corresponding secretary. His published writ-
ings include a large number of sermons and ad-
dresses. There is good reason to ascribe to his
authorship a number of poems, signed "Myron,"
in a small volume entitled A Family Tablet pub-
lished in 1796 (Proceedings of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, vol. LXII, 1930, p. 155).

Six years after the death of his first wife,
Holmes married, Mar. 26, 1801, Sarah Wendell,
only daughter of Oliver Wendell, a Boston mer-
chant. Their home was "The old Gatnbrel-roofed
House" in Cambridge, so often celebrated by
Oliver Wendell Holmes [#.z>.], the fourth of
their five children. Here tie faithful minister
and scholar compassed a long span of fruitful
years, truly respected and beloved. His theology,
that of a mild but determined Calvinist, did not
save him from the distresses attending the "Uni-
tarian schism" in New England. The termina-
tion of his practice of "exchanging" with neigh-
boring ministers of liberal views gave rise to a
bitter controversy, recorded in two pamphlets,

160