Holten

mentor and gave him, apparently, all his pro-
fessional training1. In 1756, or thereabouts, he
began the practice of medicine in Gloucester,
Mass. After two years he returned to Danvers,
bringing with him a wife, Mary (Warner) Hol-
ten, whom he had met and married (Mar. 30,
1758) in Gloucester. His position as the rising
physician of Danvers enabled him to impress his
amiable personality on his neighbors. They sent
him in 1768 to the General Court and kept him
in public office until the year just preceding his
death. The practice of his profession grew ever
more sporadic until in 1775 he abandoned it com-
pletely. His medical knowledge enabled him,
however, to serve usefully on committees of the
Provincial and Continental Congresses which
dealt with medical and surgical affairs of the
Revolutionary armies. His continued interest in
medicine is also shown by his inclusion among
those who incorporated the Massachusetts Medi-
cal Society in 1781.

His major interests lay, however, in the excite-
ment of the Revolutionary movement. He worked
on committees of correspondence, represented his
town in the General Court, in the Essex County
Convention of 1774, and in the Provincial Con-
gress of 1774-75. This latter body by appointing
him to a place on the Committee of Safety in
1775 gave him his first position of prominence.
In 1778 he was chosen to represent Massachu-
setts in the Continental Congress. During the
ensuing two years, in which he was assiduous in
attendance, he labored over the perplexing west-
ern land claims and the ratification of the Ar-
ticles of Confederation. He remained in Con-
gress during most of the life of the Articles. In
1785 he joined with Rufus King and Elbridge
Gerry [qq.v.'] in refusing to present to Congress
the Massachusetts resolves asking Congress to
call a convention for the purpose of changing the
Articles, which they felt had not yet been given
an adequate trial (C. R. King, The Life and Cor-
respondence of Rufus King, vol. I, 1894, pp. 59-
66). It is also probable that they felt some pique
that the changes were to be effected through a
convention independent of Congress. When two
years later such a convention produced a radically
different organ of government, Holten opposed
its ratification. A delegate to the Massachusetts
convention of 1788, he was the only Anti-Fed-
eralist of established reputation in that body, yet
illness robbed him of the opportunity to lead the
fight against the Constitution and forced him,
after only a few days, to retire from the conven-
tion.

The remainder of his life saw him as a patriarch
of Danvers, He held almost at will all the sig-

Holyoke
nificant town offices. He reappeared in the Gen-
eral Court as the town's senator, sat on the Gov-
ernor 's Council, and rounded out his career by
acting as judge of probate for Essex County
from 1796 to 1815. He even went to Philadelphia
to sit in the Third Congress (1793-95), but his
role in that body was not significant Late in
life, in 1812-13, he interested himself in the early
temperance movement in Massachusetts. He
died in Danvers, his wife having died three years
before.
[The Jours, of Each Provincial Cong, of Mass, in 1774
and 1775, etc. (1838); Journals^ of the Continental Cong,,
1774-88; Debates and Proc. in the Convention of the
Commonwealth of Mass. Held in the Year 1788 (1856)",
Annals of Cong., 3 Cong.; Holten MSS., Danvers Hist.
Soc.; Hist. Colls. Danvers Hist. Soc., containing Hoi-
ten's diary, vois. Ill (1915), VII-VIII (1919-20), X
(19^2); Essex Inst. Hist. Colls., vols. IV (1862), LV-
LVI (1919-20); E. C. Burnett, Letters of Members of
the Continental Cong., vols. III-IV (1926-28); Ben-
jamin Wadsworth, A Discourse Delivered . . . at the
Interment of the Honorable Samuel Holten (1816) ;
A. B. Hart, Commonwealth Hist, of Mass. (1929),
vol. Ill; Columbian Centinel (Boston), Jan. 6, 1816.]
P.H.B—-k.
HOLYOKE, EDWARD AUGUSTUS
(Aug. r, 1728-Mar. 31, 1829), physician, was
born in Marblehead, Mass., and died in Salem at
the age of one hundred years and eight months.
He was a descendant of Edward Holyoke who
emigrated from England and settled in Lynn,
Mass., in 1638, and the son of Rev. Edward Hol-
yoke, president of Harvard College from 1737
to 1769. His mother was Margaret Appleton of
Ipswich. Edward Augustus graduated from
Harvard College in 1746, and the following year
taught school in Roxbury, He studied medicine
under Dr. Thomas Berry of Ipswich and began
practice in Salem in 1749, becoming one of the
foremost New England physicians of his day and
a factor in medical education. From 1762 to 1817
he trained thirty-five students, among them Na-
thaniel W. Appleton and James Jackson [gg.z/.].
In March 1777 he took charge of the smallpox
hospital in Salem where he practised inoculation;
he was also an early vaccinator and by 1802 was
employing that preventive commonly. He was
one of the founders of the Massachusetts Medical
Society and its president from 1782 to 1784 and
from 1786 to 1787, He was also a founder of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, serv-
ing as president for six years (1814-20), and of
the Essex Historical Society, over which he pre-
sided for eight years (1821-29). He was essen-
tially a family physician, and his practice is
reputed to have been based on four drugs, mer-
cury, antimony, opium, and Peruvian bark. His
pupil, James Jackson, "beloved physician" of
Boston, in his thesis, Remarks on the Brunonlan
System (1809), which was inscribed to his