Holmes

and maintained an effective educational cam-
paign for the reduction of industrial accidents.
The arduous traveling necessary for building
up these services told on his health, particularly
as he did not spare himself in the long and wear-
ing work. Notable force of character, as well as
dexterity of action, was required for impressing
Congress and the mining industry as to the im-
portance of what he was doing. By 1915 he was
forced to retire to a sanitarium in New Mexico,
and in July death came to him in Denver from
tuberculosis. Coal mines throughout Pennsyl-
vania and West Virginia closed while operators
and miners paid homage to him. Shortly after
his death the Colorado School of Mines estab-
lished the Joseph A. Holmes professorship of
safety and efficiency engineering, and the Joseph
A. Holmes Safety Association was formed under
the auspices of the Bureau of Mines. Holmes
was married on Oct. 20,1887, to Jeanie I. Sprunt
of Wilmington, N. C. She, with two sons and
two daughters, survived him,

[Joseph Austin Holmes (Am. Mining Cong., 1915) ;
Who's Who in America, 1914-15; N. Y. Times, July
14, 1915; Evening Star (Washington, D. C), July 13,
1915; Pittsburgh Post, July 14., 1915; Rocky Mountain
News (Denver), July 13, 1915 ; Mining and Engineer-
ing Worldt July 17, 1915; Engineering and Mining
Jour,t July 17, 1915; Iron Age, July 15, 1915; Coal
Age, July 27, 1912, July 17, 1915; information from
George S. Rice, Esq., of the U. S. Bureau of Mines.]

P.B.M.

HOLMES, MARY JANE HAWES (Apr. 5,
i825-0ct 6, 1907), novelist, the daughter of
Preston and Fanny (Olds) Hawes, was born at
Brookfield, Mass. Her grandfather, Joel Hawes,
was a Revolutionary soldier; her father and his
elder brother, Rev. Joel Hawes, a New England
preacher of note, were both men of intellect; and
her mother was a lover of poetry and romance.
Mary Jane was a precocious child. She went to
school at the age of three, was studying gram-
mar at six, taught a district school at thirteen,
and began writing at fifteen. On Aug. 9, 1849,
she married Daniel Holmes, a lawyer of Brock-
port, N. Y., and lived with him for a short period
at Versailles, Ky., where she obtained atmosphere
for many future novels. For the remainder of
her life her home was in Brockport She had no
children and spent most of her time in writing
and in travel; her house was filled with paint-
ings, statuary, and curios collected on her jour-
neys. She was fond of young girls and was in
the habit of entertaining groups of them in her
home with talks on art and travel. She wrote
novels at the rate of almost one a year and their
net circulation has been estimated at over two
million. The first of these was Tempest and
Sunshine; or, Life in Kentucky (1854). It was

Holmes

followed by: English Orphans (1855), The
Homestead on the Hillside, and Other Tales
(1856), Lena Rivers (1856), Meadow Brook
(1857), Dora Deane (1858), Cousin Maude
(1860), Marian Gray (1863), Darkness and
Daylight (1864), Hugh Worthington (1865),
The Cameron Pride; or, Purified by Suffering
(1867), Rose Mather (1868), Ethelyn's Mis-
take (1869), Millbank (1871), Edna Browning
(1872), West Lawn (1874), Edith Lyle (1876),
Daisy Thornton (1878), Forrest House (1879),
Madeline (1881), Queenie Hetherton (1883),
Bessie's Fortune (1885), Marguerite (1890),
Dr. Hatherris Daughters (1895), a story of
Virginia, in four parts, Paul Ralston (1897),
The Tracy Diamonds (1899), The Cromptons
(1902), The Merivale Banks (1903), Renofs
Experiment (1904), The Abandoned Farm and
Connie's Mistake (1905). Many of these were
issued in paper covers. Long before the term
"Main Street" was applied to small town life,
Mrs. Holmes wrote "Main Street" stories. Hav-
ing a simple ethical code, in which everything
was either black or white, with no grays, and
writing in an equally simple style, she held the
devotion of a large public over a long period of
years. Next to E. P. Roe [q.v.~] she was prob-
ably the most popular of American novelists
during the period following the Civil War, but
she is now little read and her sentimental style,
hackneyed phrases, and noble heroes and super-
sensitive heroines provoke a smile. She also
wrote various magazine articles and essays,
among them Men, Don't be Selfish; a Talk to
Husbands by the Ladies' Favorite Novelist
(1888). A photograph of her, taken in later life,
shows a plain, large-featured woman, with hair
in a heavy bang. While returning from her sum-
mer home at Oak Bluffs, Mass., in 1907, she be-
came ill at Albany, but was able to reach her
home at Brockport, where she died a few days
later.

[Vital Records of Medway, Mass. (1905); date of
birth from Vital Records of Brook field, Mass. (1909) ;
Who's Who in America, 1906-07; F. E. Willard and
M. A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century (1893);
Bookman, Dec. 1907; Nation, Oct. 10, 1907; N. Y.
Tribune, Oct. 8, 1907; Buffalo Express, Oct. 7, 1907.]

S.G.B.

HOLMES, NATHANIEL (Jan. 2, iSij-Feb.
26, 1901), judge and law teacher, was born at
Peterborough, N. H,, the son of Samuel and
Mary (Annan) Holmes. He was descended
from Nathaniel Holmes, born in Coleraine, Ire-
land, who emigrated to Londonderry, N. H., in
1740. His father was a pioneer manufacturer of
machinery, who soon after his son's birth moved
to Springfield, Vt., where he built a cotton mill

168