Holt

cago. Material of^ uneven value will be found in the
following publications: Univ. Record (Univ. of CM-
cago Press), Oct. 1903, Jan., Feb., Mar. 1904; the
Nation (N. Y.), Jan. 28, 1904; C. D. Warner, Library
of the World's Best Literature, vol. XIII (1897) J
Bookman, Mar. 1904; Rev- of Revs. (N. Y.), Mar,
1904.] F.S.

HOLT, EDWIN MICHAEL (Jan. 14, 1807-
May 15, 1884), cotton manufacturer, was born
in a part of Orange County which is now in-
cluded in Alamance County, N. C. His great-
grandfather was Michael Holt, who went to
North Carolina from Virginia about 1740, and
was a machinist and farmer. Michael Holt, Jr.,
grandfather of Edwin Michael, was a blacksmith,
storekeeper, and landowner on Little Alamance
Creek. He was a Loyalist, a magistrate, and a
captain of militia, and was imprisoned in Phila-
delphia, 1776, for leading a Loyalist force at the
command of the royal governor; but, on profess-
ing allegiance to the Patriot cause, he was re-
leased at the request of his State. His son, also
named Michael, married Rachel, daughter of
Benjamin and Nancy Rainey. As a member of
the state legislature, 1804,1820, 1821, he favored
internal improvements. Edwin Michael Holt,
being a younger son, did not go to the university,
but worked on the farm in the summer, went to
the country school in winter, and picked up a
good knowledge of mechanics in his spare time.
On Sept. 30, 1828, he married Emily Parish,
'daughter of a farmer of Chatham County, by
whom he had ten children. He conducted a store
and small farm near his father's home until 1836,
•when he resolved to manufacture cotton. He had
become familiar with the little factory of Henry
Humphries at Greensboro, and was convinced
that there was profit in manufacturing the staple
in the South. His father and brother-in-law,
William A. Carrigan, were not willing to give
him assistance, but he boldly went to Paterson,
N. J., and ordered machinery. Chief Justice
Thomas Ruffin [q.v.] of North Carolina, whom
Holt met in Philadelphia, offered to help him
'with a site and money. When he reported this
fact to his family, they relented, and the mill was
erected on the water power which ran Michael
Holt's grist mill, Carrigan investing money and
'entering the firm, which was known as Holt &
Carrigan. The little factory started during the
depression of 1837, but made steady progress. In
1853 (Carrigan had left the enterprise by this
time) a French dyer offered to teach Holt to dye
for $100 and his board. A large copper boiler
which had been used to cook turnips for the pigs,
and a wash kettle from the store were used for
the vats in which the first yarns to be dyed for
power looms south of the Potomac were dipped.
Soon a dye house was equipped, some four-box

Holt

looms were installed, and the manufacture of
"Alamance Plaids/' long a celebrated name in
the industry, was commenced. The mill had be-
gun with 528 spindles and soon sixteen looms
were added. By 1861 it had 1,200 spindles and
ninety-six looms. It was smaller than several
other Southern cotton mills of the time, but Holt
reared his sons in the business, and they all built
plaid mills nearby, which twenty years after his
death aggregated over 160,000 spindles. He was
at first opposed to secession; but three of his
sons fought for the Confederacy. In 1866 he re-
tired from active management of his Alamance
mill. He held no office but that of associate
judge of the county court. A consistent advo-
cate of internal improvements, when the state
treasury was in distress after the war he loaned
$70,000 to the North Carolina Railroad, of which
he was a director, without security. With his
sons he established the Commercial National
Bank of Charlotte. He was a lifelong friend of
John M. Morehead [g.«/.], Thomas Ruffin, and
Francis Fries [q.v.~\. At the time of his death,
which occurred at his home, "Locust Grove,"
Alamance County, he was accounted the richest
man in North Carolina.

[See Samuel A. Ashe and S. B. Weeks, Biog. Hist,
of N. C., vol. VII (1908) ; Holland Thompson, From
the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill (1906); D. A.
Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features (1899);
News and Observer (Raleigh, N. C), May 16, 1884.]

B.M—1.

HOLT, HENRY (Jan. 3, i84o-Feb. 13,1926),
publisher, author, son of Dan and Ann Eve (Sie-
bold) Holt, was born in Baltimore, Md. After
attending several private schools, he entered
Yale College with the class of 1861. His free
spirit and eager intellect revolted against what
impressed him as a puritanical attitude and lack
of constructive scholarship in the institution, and
after two rather turbulent years he was forced to
drop back a class, so that he eventually took his
bachelor's degree in 1862. His personal experi-
ence with the "sham secrecy" of the societies at
Yale awakened in him a deep hatred of all shams.
During these same years the seeds of his future
career were planted by a remark made by Daniel
Coit Gilman [g.2/.], then librarian of Yale: "If
you find on a book the imprint of Ticknor and
Fields it is probably a good book." To deserve
such a reputation appealed to him as a standard
worthy of a life's endeavor; how fully he lived
up to it was abundantly attested by the tributes
that poured forth when the "dean of American
publishers" finally left the field. After his grad-
uation he went to New York to study law, and on
June ii, 1863, he married Mary Florence West,
who died in 1879. To her stimulating influence
he attributed, in later life, the really creative por-

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