Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/270

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
242
HOLMES
HOLMES

mand of the trans-Mississippi department, with headquarters at Little Rock, Ark. He was tend- ered a commission as lieutenant-general while there, and at first declined, but accepted when Jef- ferson Davis pressed it upon him a second time. In March, 1863, he was at his own request relieved in the command of the department by Gen. E. Kirby Smith. He attacked Helena, Ark., on 3 July, 1863. and was driven back with heavy losses.


HOLMES, George Frederick, educator, b'. in Demerara, British Guiana, in 1820. He was edu- cated in Durham university, England, came to the United States at the age of eighteen, and was a teacher in Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina. In 1842 he was admitted to the bar of South Caro- lina by a special act of the legislature before he had been naturalized. He was assistant editor of the "' Southern Review " for some time. He be- came a professor in Richmond college, Va., in 1845, in 1846 president of the University of Missis- sippi, and in 1847 professor of history, political economy, and international law in William and Mary college. In 1857 he was chosen professor of history and literature in the University of Vir- ginia. He is the author of a series of text-books that were used in southern schools, for which they were especially designed.


HOLMES, Isaac Edward, statesman, b. in Charleston, S. C, 6 April, 1796; d. there, 24 Feb., 1867. He was prepared for college by his cousin, Christopher E. Gadsden, and graduated at Yale in 1815, was admitted to the bar in Charleston in 1818, and became a successful lawyer. He entered the legislature in 1826, and during the nullification crisis of 1832-'3 was a leader of the extreme state- rights party, and one of the founders of the South Carolina association. The proposition that the state should nullify the tariff first emanated from him. He engaged in planting for a time. In 1838 he was sent to congress, and was an active member of the house till 1850, serving as chairman of the committee on commerce, and afterward of that on naval affairs. He then removed to California, and practised law from 1851 till January, 1861, when, on learning of the passage of the ordinance of se- cession, he returned to South Carolina. He passed through Washington, and, in several interviews with William H. Seward and Gen. Winfield Scott, endeavored to avert the civil war. After the close of hostilities he was appointed a commissioner of the state to confer with the Federal government. He was the author of the " Recreations of George Taletell," consisting of stories, essays, and descrip- tive sketches (Charleston, 1822), and, in conjunc- tion with Robert J. Turnbull, published a volume of political essays in favor of state rights, under the signature of " Caroliniensis " (1826).


HOLMES, John, Canadian senator, b. in Ross- shire, Scotland, in March, 1789 ; d. in 1870. He emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1803, and sat in the assembly of that province from 1836 till 1847, and from 1851 till 1858. From the latter date he was a legislative councillor until 1867, when he became a senator of the Dominion. — His son, Simon H., journalist, b. at East River, Pictou, N. S., in 1843, was educated at the grammar-school. New Glas- gow, and at Pictou academy, and was admitted to the bar of Nova Scotia in 1865. He was elected to the provincial parliament for Pictou, N. S., and represented it from 1871 till 1882. He has been editor and proprietor of the Pictou " Colonial Standard " for many years.


HOLMES, John, senator, b. in Kingston, Mass., in March, 1773 ; d. in Portland. Me., 7 July, 1843. He was graduated at Brown in 1796, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1799, and settled in Al- fred, Me. He practised with success, was a mem- ber of the Massachusetts house of representatives in 1802-'3, and took an active part in the debates. He was a member of the state senate from 1813 till 1817, when he was chosen to congress as a Democrat from Massachusetts, and served until the admission of Maine as a state. He was a member of the convention to form a state consti- tution, and chairman of the committee that drafted it, and was elected a senator in congress from Maine in 1820, and re-elected for a full term the following year. He was appointed by the legisla- ture a commissioner to devise and report a system of government for the state prison and to revise the criminal code of the state.' On the resignation of Albion K. Parris in 1827, he was again elected to the U. S. senate, serving till 1833. In 1835-'8 he was a member of the state house of representa- tives. In 1841 he was appointed United States attorney for the district of Maine. He published " The Statesman, or Principles of Legislation and Law " (Augusta. 1840).


HOLMES, John, Canadian educator, b. in Windsor, Vt., in 1799; d. in Lorette, near Quebec, Canada, in 1852. He was preparing to enter the ministry of the Wesleyan church, when he became a convert to Roman Catholicism. He subsequent- ly studied philosophy and theology in the seminary of Montreal, and was a professor for some time in Nicolet college. While there he was ordained priest, and appointed assistant to the cure of Ber- thier, after leaving which parish he was a mis- sionary to the eastern townships. In 1828 he en- tered the seminary of Quebec as professor, was elected a director, and soon became principal. He was the first to introduce the study of Greek into the seminary, and created a sensation by the intro- duction of dramatic performances, music, and dia- logues in public examinations. He was commis- sioned in 1836, by the provincial government, to inquire into the system of normal schools in Eu- rope and the United States, and to procure teach- ers and apparatus for the new normal school at Montreal, which was opened upon his return to Canada in 1837. The insurrection and the suspen- sion of the constitution, however, soon forced its projectors to close the institution, and it was not reopened until twenty years afterward. In 1838 a domestic affliction led him to live thenceforth in seclusion, and he appeared only to deliver a course of Lenten lectures, which was published as " Con- ferences de Notre Dame de Quebec" (1850). He published also a "Manuel abrege de geographic moderne " (revised ed., Quebec, 1870).


HOLMES, John McClellan, clergyman, b. in Livingston, N. Y., 22 Jan., 1834. He was the son of an eminent minister of the Reformed church, and was graduated at Williams in 1853, and at the New Brunswick theological seminary in 1857. He became pastor of a church in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1859, of the Reformed church in Hudson, N. Y., in 1865, and in 1877 of the State street Presbyterian church in Albany, N. Y. He was for several years a member of the educational and missionary boards of the Reformed church, president of the general synod in 1876. a delegate to the Pan-Presbyterian council at Edinburgh in 1877, and moderator of the Presbyterian synod of New York in 1884. He was also for some time an associate editor of the "Christian Intelligencer," and has contributed largely to the religious press. Many of his ser- mons have been published.


HOLMES, Mary Jane, author, b. in Brookfield, Mass. Her father was a brother of the