History of Lakeville, (Litchfield County) Connecticut United States of America

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Biographies:

Alexander Hamilton Holley, governor of Connecticut, was born at Lakeville (Salisbury), Conn., Aug. 12, 1804; son of John Milton and Sally (Porter) Holley; grandson of Luther and Sarah (Dakin) Holley, and of Col. Joshua and Abigail (Buell) Porter and a descendant in the seventh generation of John Holly, a pioneer settler of Stamford, Conn., about 1644. He obtained his preparatory education at the Rev. Orville Dewey's school at Sheffield, Mass.; at the Rev. Mr. Parker's school at Ellsworth, Conn., and at the Hudson,N.Y., academy, and intended to enter Yale, but was prevented by ill health. In 1819 he engaged with his father, senior member of the firm of Holley & Coffing, in mercantile and iron manufacturing business, and continued with that firm and other combinations of it until his father's death in 1836. He thereafter continued in local trade, to which he added in 1844 a manufactory of pocket cutlery, known after 1854 as the Holley Manufacturing company, and in 1900 the oldest continuously operated concern of its kind in the United States. He was a delegate to the convention that nominated Henry Clay for President in 1844, and a delegate at large to the convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860. In May, 1854, he was elected lieutenant governor of Connecticut, and in 1857 was elected governor, serving 1857-58. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the state militia. He was interested in all public improvements, particularly the development of railroads, being instrumental in procuring the funds for building the Housatonic railroad, assisting in the extension of the Harlem railroad from Dover to Chatbarn, N.Y., and in 1869-71 taking an active part in the organization and management of the Connecticut Western railroad. He was president of the National Iron Bank of Falls Village, Conn., and of the Salisbury Savings society. He was thrice married: first, in 1831, to Jane M., daughter of Erastus Lyman, of Goshen, Conn., who died in September, 1832, leaving one son, Alexander Lyman Holley ; secondly, in 1835, to Marcia, daughter of John C. Coffing, who died in 1854; and thirdly, in 1856, to Sarah C., daughter of the Hon. Thomas Day. Mr. Holley retired from active business about 1860. He is the author of numerous addresses and contributions to newspapers. He was elected a life member of the New England Historic Genealogical society in 1869. He died at Lakeville, Conn., Oct. 2, 1887.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Lawrence Stephen McMahon, R.C. bishop, was born at St. John, N.B., Dec. 26, 1835. He came to the United States in 1839; attended the Boston schools, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.; academies in Baltimore and Montreal, and studied theology at the College of Aix, in France and in Rome. He was ordained at St. John's Lateran, Rome, by Cardinal Patrizzi, vicar-general of Rome, March 24, 1860, and was stationed at the cathedral in Boston, Mass. He was chaplain of the 28th Massachusetts volunteers, 1863-65. He was pastor of St. Augustine's, Bridgepert, Conn., and at New Bedford, Mass., where he built the church of St. Lawrence, and a hospital, placed under the charge of the Sisters of Mercy at New Bedford. Upon the creation of the see of Providence in 1872, he was appointed vicar-general to Bishop Hendricken, and in the bishop's absence he laid the corner-stone of the cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul. He was conscrated bishop of Hartford as successor to the Rt. Rev. Thomas Galberry, deceased, at Hartford, Conn., by Archbishop Williams and Bishops Laughlin and O'Reilly, Aug. 10, 1879. The degree of D.D. was conferred on him by Rome in 1872. He was greatly interested in the erection of St. Joseph's cathedral at Hartford, and gave more than $100,000 towards its cost. He died in Lakeville, Conn., Aug. 21, 1893.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Alexander Lyman Holley, engineer, was born in Lakeville, Conn., July 20, 1832; son of Geo. Alexander Hamilton and Jane M. (Lyman) Holley, and grandson of John Milton and Sally (Porter) Holley, and of Erastus Lyman. He attended academies in Connecticut and Massachusetts and graduated at Brown, Ph.B., in 1853. In 1851, while an undergraduate, he invented a cut-off, entirely different and in many respects better than the device then in use. This was illustrated and described in Appleton's Mechanical Magazine in July, 1852. He was a draftsman and mechanic in the Corliss steam engine works, Providence, R.I., 1853-54, and was employed in the New Jersey locomotive works, Jersey City, 1854-55. He was co-editor with Zerah Colburn of the Railroad Advocate, 1855-56, purcahasing the paper in April, 1856, and editing it alone. In August, 1856, its name was changed to Holley's Railroad Advocate, and in July, 1857, it became Holley and Colburn's American Engineer. It was suspended in September, 1857, and soon after Mr. Holley went with Mr. Colburn to Europe to study foreign railway practice. Their report appeared in 1858 under the title, "The Permanent Way and Coal-Burning Locomotive Boilers of European Railways, with a Comparison of the Working Economy of European and American Lines, and the Principles upon which Improvement Must Proceed." He was scientific editor of the New York Times, 1858-63, and went to Europe as Times correspondent in 1859 and 1860, in the latter year corresponding also with the American Railway Review. In 1859 he took out two patents, one for a variable cut-off gear for steam engines, and the other for railway chairs, both largely used. In 1862 he was sent abroad by Edwin A. Stevens, who was then urging the acceptance of the Stevens battery by the government, to investigate foreign ordnance and armor, and his treatise on the subject, published in 1865, was translated into French, and became a recognized authority. In 1863 he again went to England, where he made a study of the Bessemer steel process, and effected with Corning, Winslow & Co. the purchase of the Bessemer patents, which were subsequently combined with Kelly's American patents. In 1865 the Bessemer works at Troy were built and started, and then followed works at Harrisburg, North Chicago, Joliet, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Cambria, Bethlehem and Scranton. Mr. Holley was actively connected with the Bessemer manufacture during the rest of his life, devising numerous valuable improvements and machines which secured convenience in hauling material and reduced the the lost in repairs. The productiveness of the American Bessemer plant increased during Holley's management from a capacity of about 900 tons to more than 10,000 tons per month. Besides the two patents already mentioned, he obtained fourteen others, ten of which were for improvements in the Bessemer process and plant, two for roll-trains and their feed-tables, one for a water-cooled furnace-roof and one for a steam-boiler furnace, with gaseous fuel. During 1869 he edited Van Nostrand's Electric Engineering Magazine. In June, 1875, be was appointed a member of the U.S. board for testing structural materials, the formation of which board he had been active in promoting. He was a trustee of the Rensselaer Polytechnic institute, 1865-67 and 1870-82, and lecturer on the manufacture of iron and steel at the Columbia college school of mines, 1879-82. He was elected a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1872, and its president, in 1875, and was also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a vice-president in 1876; a founder and member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a member of the British Iron and Steel institute and Institution of Civil Engineers. He received the degree of LL.D. from Brown in 1878. He is the author of: American and European Railway Practice (1860, new ed., 1867); A Treatise on Ordnance and Armor (1865), and numerous addresses and technical papers, including forty-one articles on "American Iron and Steel," contributed in conjunction with Lenox Smith to the London Engineering. By the joint action of the British Iron and Steel institute, of London, and the American Institute of Mining Engineers, a memorial bronze bust of Mr. Holley, modelled by J. Q. A. Ward, was unveiled in Washington square, New York city, Sept. 29, 1890. In 1884 a memorial volume was published by the American Institute of Mining Engineers. In October, 1900, his name was submitted to the board of electors as eligible for a place in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, New York university, and received eight votes; Eads, Ricbardson and Corliss, in the class, with forty-two, thirty-one and twelve votes, respectively, only exceeding. He died in Brooklyn, N.Y., Jan. 29, 1882.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor