The Norweb Collection - An American Legacy

Westward to Ohio

Less than two years later, midway through the 1856 academic year, Liberty heard the call of the West. In the 1850s, all land west of the Pennsylvania border was called the West. He said, in later years, that he left Waterville College and Maine because he felt the opportunities for a young man just starting out in life were greater in the West than in the East. After traveling to Philadelphia, where he sought his uncle Ezra's advice about the relocation, he returned to his father's house, sent in an application for admission to the new University of Michigan, and after receiving his acceptance into that institution, left Maine and his family.

Between the ages of 22 and 24, from 1856 to 1858, Liberty was a student at the University of Michigan. In his second year there he taught English at a Union school in Ann Arbor, to earn the money he needed for his own schooling. After graduating in 1858, Liberty successfully applied for the position of Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. Concurrently with his teaching duties he continued his own studies, receiving his master's degree from the University of Michigan in 1861. The academic life appealed to Liberty's studious nature, and he seems never to have broken completely the academic mold in which he cast himself.

One of the students in Liberty's college English class was Delia Elizabeth Bulkley, a pretty Ohio girl with a sensible head on her shoulders. Her father was professor of mathematics at Williams College. Taken by her appearance and impressed with her intelligence, Liberty proposed to his student, and they were married on August 14, 1860. The marriage marked another important turning point in Liberty's life, for his bride brought with her not only brains and looks, but also a dowry large enough to allow the couple some freedom from want, and substantial connections in northern Ohio society. Over the years the couple was to have nine children, the last two being fraternal twins. Large families were not unusual for the time, and were the norm in the Holden family: Liberty was one of 11 children.

The year after he received his bachelor's degree Liberty seems to have decided that, while he loved it and it suit him nicely, the life of a college professor was not one that lead to great financial success. Accordingly, at the same time he was studying for his master's degree and teaching college, Liberty began reading the law, intending to open his own practice later.

The following year the couple moved from Kalamazoo to the small Ohio town of Tiffin, located about midway between Toledo and Cleveland, where Liberty took the job of superintendent of schools. They remained there for little more than a year, Liberty continuing to study law in the evenings, when they jointly decided to move to Cleveland, a city in the early stages of an expansion that would see its size double over the next decade. It is not known whose idea this move was originally, but there is good circumstantial evidence that Delia and her brother Henry, who had been in the same class in college with his sister and so was also Liberty's pupil, were the champions of the move, for 10 years later Liberty and Henry were partners in the ownership of substantial real estate in East Cleveland.

Cleveland and Success

Leaving Tiffin meant more than just closing one home and opening another elsewhere. For Liberty, it signaled the end of the career path he had set for himself when a boy on his father's farm in Raymond, Maine. He never again taught school. In the short two years after his marriage, Liberty Holden had made several serious career decisions which put him on a path he had not expected for himself, but one which would, ultimately, lead him to riches and fame.

After moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1862 Liberty was accepted as a law clerk to Judge Jesse P. Bishop, a local magistrate known for his liberal attitudes, who took as another of his law clerks the first black member of the Cleveland bar. In 1863, four years after starting his study of the law, Liberty was admitted to the bar. Although he never actually practiced, his legal training came in handy later.

By 1862, of course, the Civil War was raging, growing in intensity from the battles of Shiloh in April to Antietam in September, but the war did not affect Liberty and his wife directly. Later, the war's insatiable appetite for coal, iron, and steel to forge its tools would point a new direction for Liberty. It was the growth of Cleveland's population during the war years that proved the first opportunity for Liberty's future prosperity.

Little is known of his activities in the period 1862-1872. In the former year he moved to East Cleveland, the area of the city that is now East 55th Street and Euclid Avenue. Shortly after the move, in partnership with his brother-in-law Henry, Liberty began buying real estate and developing inexpensive housing for emigrants arriving in Cleveland, as well as more substantial housing for the richer members of Cleveland society. In the 10 years after he arrived in the city Liberty amassed a small fortune that made him essentially independent of the need to work for his living in the future. Undoubtedly, his legal training and membership in the Cleveland bar were of assistance in his real estate transactions at this time. In 1872, when documentation about Liberty's life is once again available, we find him well established on the road to financial success.