Holmes

cinnati, and went to Europe in 1884, traveling
through England, France, Italy, and Germany.
In the year of his arrival in England he pub-
lished in London under the name of "Daniel
Henry, Jun.," a book of poems that he had writ-
ten previously in Kentucky. Entitled Under a
Fool's Cap (1884), it contained twenty-four
lyrics based upon old nursery rhymes. In 1890
his father gave him "Holmesdale," but he con-
tinued to spend almost as much time abroad as at
home. In 1904, however, he returned to Ken-
tucky where he wrote another volume of poems,
A Pedlar's Pack, published in New York in 1906.
In the same year he published in Cincinnati
Hempen Homespun Songs, a collection of four-
teen songs for four of which he had written the
words as well as the music. Although his second
book contained some graceful lyrics, and his
third some pleasing songs, his first book, Under
a Fool's Cap, remains his best. From the sug-
gestions found in twenty-four familiar nursery
rhymes he wrote a group of lyrics unlike any-
thing else in English poetry. Some of them are
elaborated stories, some are allegories, and still
others are illustrations of the modern instance of
a particular Mother-Goose rhyme. The fact that
their author was a musician is everywhere evi-
dent from the musical qualities of these poems.
Holmes's works would probably have remained
unknown for a longer time but for their discov-
ery by Thomas Bird Mosher [q.v.] who was the
first to identify the authorship of his early poems.
Holmes went to Hot Springs, Va., in the fall of
1908 to spend the winter. There he died sudden-
ly in the early morning of Dec. 15. He was
buried in Cincinnati.

[There is a Foreword by Thos. Bird Mosher and a
critical essay by Norman Roe in Under a Fool's Cap
(editions 1910, 1911, 1914, 1925). See also J. W.
Townsend, Ky. in Am. Letters (2 vols., 1913); Cin-
cinnati Enquirer, Dec. 16, 1908; and, for reviews of
Holmes's works, W. T. Lamed, "A Poet in a Fool's
Cap," Century Mag., Feb. 1914, and comment in the
Bibelot, May 1910. Information as to certain facts was
supplied for this sketch by Mrs. Daniel Henry Holmes.]

W.K.D.

HOLMES, DAVID (Mar. 10, i77o-Aug. 20,
1832), governor of Mississippi, was the second
of nine children born to Joseph and Rebecca
(Hunter) Holmes. His mother was of Presby-
terian stock, sister of Rev. Andrew Hunter
[q.v.]; his father, according to tradition of Eng-
lish descent, was a native of the north of Ireland
who emigrated to Pennsylvania in his teens.
Both David and his older brother, Hugh, later a
Virginia judge, were born at Mary Ann Furnace
in York County, Pa., but while they were still
small, their parents migrated to Frederick
County, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley. Joseph

Holmes
Holmes established himself as a merchant in
Winchester, and during the Revolution was
given charge of prisoners of war held there.
David received his schooling at the academy in
Winchester and at fifteen became his father's
partner and accountant. In 1790 he went to Wil-
liamsburg to study law, and after being admitted
to the bar, opened an office in Harrisonburg,
where from 1793 to 1797 ne was commonwealth's
attorney for Rockingham County (J, W. Way-
land, A History of Rockingham County, Va,.,
1912, p. 442). In 1797 he was sent to Congress
as a Jeffersonian Republican and was reflected
five times. In 1809, upon the expiration of his
sixth term, President Madison appointed him
governor of Mississippi Territory (Journal of
the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the
United States of America, vol. II, 1828, p. 119),
in which capacity he served by successive reap-
pointments until the admission of Mississippi to
the Union (Ibid., pp. 241, 589).
As governor he was called upon to exercise
courage, discretion, and tact. The territory was
menaced on its borders by hostile Creeks and not-
too-friendly Choctaws who threatened at times
to cut the Mississippi settlements off from com-
munication with the states to the north (I. J.
Cox, The West Florida Controversy, 1918, p.
438). To the south, in West Florida, settlers
from the United States were growing restive
under Spanish taxation and Spanish authority;
within the Territory, resentment against restric-
tions imposed on commerce by Spanish customs
duties was increasing; one of the duties of the
Governor of Mississippi was to restrain his peo-
ple and their emigrant brethren from acts of hos-
tility toward a power with which the United
States was at peace (Cox, passim). When the
time was ripe, however, Holmes's tactful co-
operation with Gov. W. C. C. Claiborne [q.vJ\
was instrumental in effecting the successful oc-
cupation of the District of Baton Rouge (Cox,
P- 505)> and the later annexation (1812) of the
District of Mobile to Mississippi Territory. (See
I. J. Cox, in American Historical Review, Janu-
ary 1912.) During the next three years came
both the Creek War and the War of 1812. In
1816 two great tracts of land to the north of the
settled area were ceded to the Territory by the
Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians (American
State Papers: Indian Affairs, vol. II, 1834, pp.
92, 95). The following year the Territory was
divided, and the western portion admitted to the
Union as the State of Mississippi. Holmes was
a delegate from Adams County to the constitu-
tional convention of 1817 and was chosen to be
its president (J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi,