Luther Holley was a successful farmer, merchant and iron master from Salisbury, Conn., and, although not formally educated, was considered a highly intelligent, even learned man. He exerted a powerful influence over his famous son, Horace, that lasted throughout their lives. Horace Holley attended preparatory school at Williams College in 1797 and transferred to Yale in 1799. During his four years at Yale, he became popular with faculty members and students alike and rose to the top of his class. His greatest asset in the minds of many of his colleagues was his remarkable oratorical skill, which found its first flowering in the graduation address he delivered in 1803, "The Slavery of Freethinking."

Setting his sights on a career in law, Holley arranged to study in the office of Riggs & Radcliffe of New York, but found himself becoming disillusioned within a few short months. Enticed by the religious revival stirring New England, he returned to Yale to take up the study of divinity under then-President, Timothy Dwight (1752-1817). Although his mother, Sarah (Dakin) Holley, was Baptist and his father Calvinist, Holley's early religious training had been somewhat lax. At Yale, however, he adopted a rigorous, intellectually demanding Hopkinsian theology, and fell under the sway of the Scottish philosophers, Stewart, Reid, Locke, and especially Brown. After receiving his degree in December, 1804, Holley accepted the pastorate of the Congregational Church in Greenfield Hill, Conn. Before the move to Greenfield, he married Mary Austin of New Haven, a woman of remarkable intellect herself.

Holley remained at Greenfield Hill for only three years, but a gradual shift in his religious attitudes and an increasing desire for a better financial situation led him to resign in 1808 and move to Boston. Installed at the Hollis Street Church on March 8, 1809, Holley's conversion to Unitarianism became complete. While in Boston, his oratorical talents transformed him into a vastly popular public figure, and he became a member of a variety of benevolent societies, served on the board of Overseers of Harvard University, and on the school committee of Boston. He was a strong supporter of the Federalist Party, but retained a basic respect for the arch-Democrat, Thomas Jefferson. An excerpt from James S. Loring's The Hundred Boston Orators, gives a sense of Holley's magnetic appeal during this period: ...but I will say that Horace Holley was a man of great personal masculine beauty. When he ascended the pulpit, in his flowing gown and assuming the air and attitude of the orator, bold and expressive, threw his eyes around him on the gazing audience, the scene itself was eloquent. His voice was mellow, rich, and silver-toned, thrilling at times with the very essence of melody.

By 1818, Holley had won the respect of not only his congregation in Boston, but also of the elite political and intellectual circles in which he moved. His reputation as a clear-minded, liberal and incisive thinker had spread throughout New England to Washington, D.C., and as far west as Kentucky.

In Lexington, Ky., a fierce conflict between the Presbyterian founders of Transylvania University and politicians anxious to bring prosperity to the region and make the city the liberal, cultural center of the West, resulted in a small coup on the university's Board of Trustees. With Presbyterian influence temporarily defeated, the Board turned to Rev. Holley to help them achieve their goal of a greater Kentucky, offering him the school's presidency in 1817. Liberals viewed Holley as having the national reputation, open-mindedness, and ability to build Transylvania into an outstanding university, though at the time, the institution was little more than a grammar school, with few students and even fewer graduates.

Holley was intrigued enough by the offer to travel to Lexington in 1818 to investigate the position. The curiosity of the Presbyterian community in Lexington and Holley's ability to charm an audience temporarily won over the religious opposition to his election. His willing non-sectarianism and genuine interest in the untapped potential at Transylvania University led him to accept the Board's offer and to move permanently to Kentucky. Holley's second child, a son, was born while he was on this exploratory journey.

The years of Holley's presidency at Transylvania (1818-1827) were distinguished by the creation of the Medical and Law Schools, the former of which became one of the best in the nation. He also oversaw the total reorganization of the institution into a four-year college, and saw an immediate increase in the number of students, the expansion of the facilities to include a gymnasium, and the founding of an art gallery and respectable library. Yet the religious rifts that had emerged prior to his arrival never fully healed, and Holley's liberal theological perspective reopened the still fresh wounds. An example of the religious philosophy that some members of the Trustees found so unpalatable can be drawn from the following excerpt written by Holley about a friend:

Colonel Morrison was a Christian in his sentiments and practice, but did not consider the peculiarities of any sectarian creeds in religion, whether papal or protestant, ancient or modern, as necessary, or as useful, or as ornamental to his character. He had large views and philanthropic feelings, and recognized the wisdom, authority, goodness, and impartiality of the Deity in all the relations of life, in the wide variety of natural scenery before him, in the temple made without hands as well as in that erected by human art and consecrated to the immediate acts of formal worship, in the ages that are past as well as in those now present, in the foreign city and cottage of the distant gentile as well as in the metropolis of Christendom and the village church of the pious followers of the heaven-directed teacher of Nazareth. With him, a life of virtue was the most acceptable homage to the Deity. He knew and felt that the end of all genuine religion is to make men good, useful, and happy. He ordinarily attended worship in the churches of the Presbyterians, a highly respectable and pious body of Christians; but he was entirely eclectic in his principles, taking truth wherever he found it, and giving the hand of fellowship to all good men of every country and denomination. In this respect he invites our imitation, and furnishes us with a suitable occasion to thank our Heavenly Father for the happy formation of his character, for the judicious direction of his opinions, and for the catholic scope of his philanthropic communion.

Thus despite Holley's great successes, his liberal religious views clashed too strongly with the conservative Presbyterians on the Board of Trustees, and his allegedly extravagant social life and Federalist sympathies also won him enemies in Lexington. In the end, the smooth administration of the university become nearly impossible, and these tensions, combined with poor financial support from the state, led Holley to tender his resignation in 1826, which was accepted in 1827. Although Holley's successors were less brilliant, and the institution entered into a period of decline, peace returned to Transylvania.

Holley left Lexington in March, 1827, hoping to take a group of young boys to Europe, but changed his mind when offered the opportunity to help found a college in New Orleans. His supporters offered Holley complete control of the finances and administration of the institution. Before the college ever opened, however, Holley took a brief sea excursion to beat the summer heat, contracted yellow fever at sea, and died on July 31, 1827.

Scope and contents:

The letters and journal that comprise the Horace Holley Papers vividly describe Holley's trip from Boston to Lexington, Ky., in 1818 when he went to investigate the possibility of taking the presidency of Transylvania University. The Reverend's reputation and social interests ensured warm receptions in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. His discussions of the social life in these cities, of contemporary politicians, artists, intellectuals, and businessmen are excellent, and of course he paid particularly close attention to each of the major colleges along the route. One of Holley's favorite topics was female beauty, and the glowing accounts he provides of the sumptuous dinner parties and balls he attended are characteristic of his aristocratic tendencies. The highlights of the first half of his trip are his descriptions of a ball at the Washington Hall in Philadelphia, his discussion of the paintings of Thomas Sully, Yale and Columbia Colleges, his political contacts, and especially his visit with President James Monroe.

After Holley left Washington, the tone of his letters becomes more contemplative. His impressions of Virginia, Mount Vernon, and of the institution of slavery are intriguing, and the conditions he describes in a Virginia coal mine are shocking. The beauty of the Ohio River, however, enraptured Holley as he made his way toward Lexington, and when finally arrives at his destination, he provides an excellent account of society in the rough-hewn west. Holley's hopes of turning Lexington into an important center for education and the "refinement of society" -- not to mention his desire to overcome religious sectarianism -- convinced him that it was his duty to accept the Presidency of Transylvania University. He had few doubts that he would achieve his goals, though his wife's negative premonitions turned out to be more correct.

References:

Caldwell, Charles. A Discourse on the genius and character of the Rev. Horace Holley (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, & Wilkins, 1828)

Loring, James S. The Hundred Boston Orators (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1953)

Sonne, Niels H. Liberal Kentucky, 1780-1828 (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1939)
Townsend, John Wilson. Lore of the Meadowland: Short Studies in Kentuckiana (Lexington, Ky.: J.L. Richardson & Co., 1911)

For an unfavorable account of Holley and his administration of Transylvania University see Davidson, Robert. History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, 1847

Related materials:

Another Holley letter is located in the West Family Papers, a copy of a 3 pp. letter to the Hollis Street Church Committee, 1818 Sept. 8, concerning the dissolution of his connection with the church.

There is a substantial collection (2 cu. feet) of material by and relating to Horace Holley in the Holley Collections of the Library at Transylvania State University

The American Science & Medicine Collection contains a set of notes, ca.1825, for a series of lectures probably delivered by Dr. Charles Caldwell at Transylvania College.

M-2135

Subject index to the Horace Holley Papers

Genealogies for the Horace Holley Papers

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