Holsey

sey, who was his father. Upon the death of his
father and first master when the boy was about
seven years old, he was taken from his mother,
with whom he did not live again for some years.
They were reunited on the place of Lucius' sec-
ond owner, James Holsey's cousin, in Hancock
County, Ga. In 1857, this man, T. L. Wynn,
died, and young Holsey fell into the service of
Col. R. M. Johnstone. As a slave he received no
regular education, but with the initiative which
characterized him he learned in any way he
could; and, having been converted under the
ministration of W. H. Parks, of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, he became intensely
interested in matters of religion. On Nov. 8,
1863, he married Harriet A. Pearce (Who's
Who in America, 1910-11; Harriet A. Turner
in Who's Who in America, 1918-19) of Sparta,
Hancock County, who became the mother of
nine children. For three years after he became
free, he managed a farm near Sparta, and he
received instruction from Bishop George Fos-
ter Pierce [#.#.], of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South. Licensed to preach in 1868, he
served for a while on the Hancock circuit, and on
Jan. 9,1869, was sent by Bishop Pierce to Savan-
nah. In 1870 he was a delegate to the first General
Conference of the Colored Methodist Episcopal
Church, assembled in Jackson, Tenn., at which
gathering this denomination was organized as a
body distinct from the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, of which up to that time it had
formed a part; and he offered the resolution that
led to the establishing of a publishing-house for
the new connection. In 1871 he went to Augusta,
Ga., as pastor of Trinity Church, and, after being
there a little more than two years, he was, in
March 1873, at ^e second General Conference
of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church,
elected bishop, his youth and his rapid rise indi-
cating uncommon ability in leadership. He was
a member of the Ecumenical Conference which
assembled in London in 1881, and he was also a
delegate to that in Washington in 1891. He rep-
resented his denomination at the Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, held in
Nashville in 1882, and won the assistance of that
body for education. He was instrumental in
founding and in raising the first money for Paine
College, Augusta, Ga., in founding Lane Col-
lege, Jackson, Tenn., and in founding the Holsey
Industrial Institute, Cordele, Ga., and the Helen
B. Cobb Institute for Girls, Barnesville, Ga.
For a quarter of a century he was secretary of
the College of Bishops of his church, and for
many years corresponding secretary for the de-
nomination. He compiled a Hymn Book of the

Hoist

Colored M. E. Church in America (1891), A
Manual of the Discipline of the Colored Metho-
dist Episcopal Church in America (1894); and
for some years edited the church paper, The
Gospel Trumpet. He also served as commis-
sioner of education for his connectioa

[Materials on Holsey are scattered and contradic-
tory, but note C. H. Phillips, The Hist, of the Colored
Meth. Episc. Ch. in America (1898); J. W. Gibson and
W. H. Crogman, The Colored American (1902); The
Nat. Cyc. of the Colored Race, vol. I (1919), ed. by
Clement Richardson; Hist, of the Am. Negro and His
Institutions, vol. I (1917), ed. by A. B. Caldwell; Who's
Who in Americat 1910-19; Atlanta four., Aug. 4,
1920.] B B>

HOLST, HERMANN EDUARD von (June
19, i84i-Jan. 20, 1904), historian, was born at
Fellin, a small town of one of the former Baltic
provinces of Russia and since 1919 in the repub-
lic of Esthonia. He was the seventh in a suc-
cession of ten children born to Valentin von
Hoist, a Lutheran minister, and to his wife,
Marie Lenz. The Von Hoists belonged to the
considerable group of German colonists who had
settled along the Baltic shores during the four-
teenth century, and German influences surround-
ed young Eduard in family, church, and school
throughout his formative years. While he was
still at the Gymnasium, the death of his father
left the family in desperate circumstances, and
only by giving private lessons and following the
most Spartan code of life was he able to continue
at school and, later, to take up his university
studies at Dorpat and Heidelberg. Drawn early
to history, he specialized in the modern field,
taking his doctor's degree at the latter institution
in 1865. Had not fate interfered, his magnum
opus would have been devoted to France, for he
worked for a considerable period in the archives
of Paris and put out as the first fruits of his
labors a study of the reign of Louis XIV (Feder-
seichnimgen aus der Geschichte des Despotis~
mus, 1868 ). Even before this work saw the light,
however, the crisis had been precipitated which
was destined to divert his interest from Europe
to the United States. Detesting the autocracy
of his native Russia, he ventured (1867) to at-
tack it in a fiery pamphlet which promptly elic-
ited an order of arrest. Since he was abroad at
the time, he could not be apprehended but he
now no longer had any place he could call home.
Resolutely turning his back on Europe, he board-
ed an emigrant ship and in 1867 landed in New
York, a friendless, penniless human atom vio-
lently hurled from its familiar orbit

Although acquainted from youth with every
variety of hardships, his sufferings in New York,
where he was obliged to eke out a miserable ex-

177