Michael Hodder and Q. David Bowers
The Holden Family: Roots in England
Liberty Emery Holden, father of Albert Fairchild Holden and grandfather of Emery May Holden Norweb, was the bearer of a proud and long-established name. He was born on a small farm in Raymond, Maine, which at the time of his birth in 1833 was still part of the northern New England frontier. Later, as a member of the Mayflower Society and the Sons of the American Revolution, Liberty Holden took great pleasure in tracing the growth of the Holden family in America from its earliest days in the mid 17th century, eventually commissioning a two-volume genealogical register of all Holdens who could trace their ancestry back to the original settlers in the New World.
The Holdens were participants and observers in the unfolding of American history. The parts they played were small at first, but they were played well and with a constancy that did not seem to vary from one generation to the next. If Liberty Holden's star seemed to shine the brightest in the family's constellation, it may have drawn something of its light from those who had gone before him. In the persons of Richard and Justinian Holden, the first of the name to settle in the new world, and of John Holden, Lieutenant in the Second Middlesex Regiment of militia during the Revolutionary War, we can find earlier examples of the same spirit of determination to succeed despite risks, the same respect for education, and the same knack for making a name for themselves by being in the right place at the right time, that became Liberty's hallmarks. As the present narrative is a saga focusing on several generations of achievers, it is relevant to examine the historical background.
Before the Norman Conquest of Saxon England in 1066 the Haldanes, as their name was spelled in Domesday Book, were small landowners in Suffolk, farmers who worked their lands and escaped the confiscations that fell heavily on the Saxon aristocracy following the Conquest. The Suffolk Holdens prospered in a quiet way, escaping the notice of history writ large, but not that of their neighbors and friends in the parish of Lindsey, the seedbed of the Massachusetts Puritans.
Adam Winthrop recorded in his diary for 1592/93 that he had employed Adam Holding (the surname was variously spelled Holding, Houlding, and Holden at this time) with his cart and plough for that season's harvest. A later entry, dated January 6, 1603/4 (the "fiscal" year began on September 29, the Feast of St. Michael, called Michaelmas; Winthrop used this method of reckoning dates in his diary) records that Adam Holding had left his employ that year. Adam Winthrop was the father of John, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, who was elected to that position in 1629 before leaving England. Adam Holding was the uncle of Justinian and Richard Holden, passengers on the Francis, which sailed for Boston on April 10, 1634, who were the forebears of the Holdens of numismatic fame we shall meet later in this book. It is not inconceivable that John Winthrop's example inspired Justinian and Richard to seek their own fortunes in the new world of America, as well as to escape religious intolerance from the established Church of England.
Suffolk was the home of the religious dissenters we now call Puritans. Winthrop was one of the elders of the movement. That Richard and Justinian Holden were of the same sect as the Winthrops is strongly suggested by a later family tradition dating to 1814. In that year Abiel Holden of Massachusetts compiled his Copies of Records in the Possession of Abiel Holden of Reading, which drew upon memories of family members then alive and records of the early years of the Holden settlement in America. According to Abiel's account, independently confirmed in 1848 by his brother Luther, both Richard and Justinian suffered arrest and the threat of imprisonment for attending a public meeting of the dissenters. Family lore avers that they were saved from imprisonment by the timely intervention of an uncle named James Holden, described as one of the "Lords of England;' with an annual income of 25,000 pounds sterling, who agreed to go surety for their future good behavior on their promise never again to attend a Puritan service. Unwilling to forego their heavenly reward for earthly peace, the narrative concludes with Richard and Justinian sailing for Boston in search of a Puritan heaven on earth.
It is a nice story, suggesting both family wealth and social position in the figure of the uncle, and personal strength of character and religious belief in the figures of the incorruptible brothers. It is more likely an elaboration of fact than a relation of actual events, however. Pared down to its essentials we can be fairly certain that the story accurately records Richard's and Justinian's status as dissenters from the Church of England; that they may well have suffered what later generations called "persecution" at the hands of local Suffolk authorities charged with their oversight; and that their "deliverance" may well have come at the hands of someone influential enough to warrant surety for their future good behavior. Three members of the extended Holden family in Suffolk, all pastors of the dissenting faith, are known to have suffered similar inconvenience for their beliefs (another Holden, however, found no trouble remaining in the Church of England and prospering under its mantle). The wealthy deliverer, who in the story is taken into the Holden family, is either an apocryphal nicety added later by a successful generation searching for silver-plated roots, or, more temptingly, may be a poorly remembered example of patronage by a Winthrop, whose family had earlier employed Adam Holden, the brothers uncle.
The real religious motive for emigration to a harsh and unknown new world should not be discounted, however, as it impelled others to make the long and dangerous voyage to Massachusetts from the Suffolk port of Ipswich. Whether they came to seek their material fortunes or to foster their spiritual ones, or for both motives, by sailing on the Francis Richard and Justinian Holden caught one of history's spring tides, one which would carry them and their descendants toward success in the New World.