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     John Buckhannon Holmead was born on 14 October 1798.¹ He was the son of Anthony Holmead II and Sarah (Unknown).¹ John Buckhannon Holmead was christened on 7 April 1799 at Prince George Parish, Montgomery County, Maryland.¹ He married Jane Pairo on 12 October 1830 in Washington, District of Columbia.^2,3

     Leigh Richmond Holmead was born in 1833.¹ He was the son of Anthony Holmead III and Mary Clifford Webster.¹ Leigh Richmond Holmead died on 13 March 1903.¹

     Mary Eleanor Holmead was born on 1 November 1810.¹ She was the daughter of Anthony Holmead II and Sarah (Unknown).¹ Mary Eleanor Holmead was christened on 14 April 1811 at Prince George Parish, Montgomery County, Maryland.¹

     Mary Ellen Holmead was the daughter of John Buckhannon Holmead and Jane Pairo.¹ Mary Ellen Holmead married Richard Tristram Martin on 10 November 1863.¹ Mary Ellen Holmead died on 12 March 1901.¹

     Matilda Speak Holmead was born on 12 September 1803.¹ She was the daughter of Anthony Holmead II and Sarah (Unknown).¹ Matilda Speak Holmead was christened on 23 October 1803 at Prince George Parish, Montgomery County, Maryland.¹

     Sarah Holmead was the daughter of John Buckhannon Holmead and Jane Pairo.

     Sophia E. Holmead was born circa 1832 in Washington, District of Columbia.¹ She was the daughter of John Buckhannon Holmead and Jane Pairo.

     Rev. Abiel Holmes was born on 24 December 1763.² He was the son of Captain David Holmes and Temperance Bishop.² Rev. Abiel Holmes graduated in 1783 from Yale.¹ He married Mary Stiles, daughter of Ezra Stiles, in 1790.² Rev. Abiel Holmes was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.¹ He married Sarah Wendell, daughter of Judge Oliver Wendell and Mary Jackson, on 26 March 1801 in Boston, Massachusetts.^1,2,3 Rev. Abiel Holmes died on 4 June 1837 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 73.^2,4

     Amelia Jackson Holmes was born on 20 October 1843.¹ She was the daughter of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Amelia Lee Jackson.¹ Amelia Jackson Holmes married John Turner Welles Sargent on 25 May 1871.¹ Amelia Jackson Holmes died on 3 April 1889 at the age of 45.¹

     Ann Susan Holmes was born on 15 May 1804.¹ She was the daughter of Rev. Abiel Holmes and Sarah Wendell.¹ Ann Susan Holmes married Charles Wentworth Upham, son of Joshua Upham and Mary Chandler, on 29 March 1826.¹ Ann Susan Holmes died on 5 April 1877 in Salem, Massachusetts, at the age of 72.¹

     Bradford Holmes. A farmer.¹ He was born on 26 August 1813 in Holmes' Hill, East Stoughton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts.¹ He married Harriet Hyde Alexander, daughter of Benjamin Alexander and Hannah Sewall, on 4 July 1841 in Stoughton.¹ Bradford Holmes died on 4 February 1884 in Sharon, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, at the age of 70¹ and is buried in Dry Pond Cemetery, Stoughton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts.²

     Charlotte W. Holmes was born on 21 November 1826 in Amhurst, New Hampshire.² She was the daughter of David Holmes.² Charlotte W. Holmes married Jacob Smith Sewall, son of General Joseph Sewall and Eliza W. Smith, on 11 May 1841 in Bath, Sagadahoc County, Maine.¹ "Mrs. Charlotte W. Sewall who lived in Skowhegan and taught the piano in the 60's and 70's."³ Charlotte W. Holmes died on 2 August 1912 in Winchester, Massachusetts, at the age of 85² and is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery, Bath, Sagadahoc County, Maine.^4,5

     David Holmes was born circa 1635 in England.¹ He married Jane (Unknown) in 1658.¹ David Holmes died in 1666 in Milton, Massachusetts.¹

     Captain David Holmes was born on 11 August 1721 in Woodstock.¹ He was the son of Deacon David Holmes and Bathsheba (Unknown).¹ Captain David Holmes married Mehitable Mayhew seven children.¹ Captain David Holmes married Temperance Bishop, daughter of John Bishop and Temperance Lathrop, in 1761.¹ Captain David Holmes died on 19 March 1779 at the age of 57.¹

     Deacon David Holmes was born in 1692 in Woodstock.¹ He was the son of John Holmes and Hannah Newell.¹ Deacon David Holmes married Bathsheba (Unknown).¹ Deacon David Holmes died in 1745.¹

     General David Holmes was born on 17 August 1762.¹ He was the son of Captain David Holmes and Temperance Bishop.¹ General David Holmes died on 30 June 1832 at the age of 69.¹

     Edward Jackson Holmes was born on 17 October 1846.¹ He was the son of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Amelia Lee Jackson.¹ Edward Jackson Holmes married Henrietta Goddard Wigglesworth, daughter of Edward Wigglesworth and Henrietta (Unknown), on 24 October 1871.¹ Edward Jackson Holmes died on 18 July 1884 at the age of 37.¹

     Edward Jackson Holmes Jr. was born on 3 January 1873.¹ He was the son of Edward Jackson Holmes and Henrietta Goddard Wigglesworth.¹ Edward Jackson Holmes Jr. married Mary Stacy Beaman on 8 July 1897.¹

     Elizabeth S. Holmes was born in 1856. She married Maj. Gen. Erasmus Morgan Weaver.² Elizabeth S. Holmes died in 1935.

     George Ropes Holmes was born on 21 June 1816 in Massachusetts.² He married Rachel Averill, daughter of Lt. Thomas Averill and Rachel Sewall.¹ George Ropes Holmes died on 4 February 1907 in Maine at the age of 90.²

     Hartwell Holmes was born on 17 March 1772.¹ He was the son of Captain David Holmes and Temperance Bishop.¹

     John Holmes. An attorney of Cambridge.² He was born on 29 March 1812.¹ He was the son of Rev. Abiel Holmes and Sarah Wendell.¹ John Holmes died on 27 January 1899 at the age of 86 unmarried.¹

     John Holmes was born in 1664 in Milton, Massachusetts.¹ He was the son of David Holmes and Jane (Unknown).¹ John Holmes married Hannah Newell in 1690.¹ John Holmes died in 1713 in Woodstock, Connecticut.¹

     Dr. Lathrop Holmes was born on 7 May 1768.¹ He was the son of Captain David Holmes and Temperance Bishop.¹ Dr. Lathrop Holmes died in 1801 lost in a shipwreck.^1,2

     Leonard Holmes was born on 17 April 1770.¹ He was the son of Captain David Holmes and Temperance Bishop.¹

     Liberty Holmes was born on 3 April 1776.¹ She was the daughter of Captain David Holmes and Temperance Bishop.¹

     Margaret Holmes married Lewis Wood on 29 July 1593 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.¹

     Mary Jackson Holmes was born on 17 January 1802.¹ She was the daughter of Rev. Abiel Holmes and Sarah Wendell.¹ Mary Jackson Holmes married Dr. Usher Parsons on 23 September 1822.¹ Mary Jackson Holmes died on 14 June 1825 at the age of 23.¹

     Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The poet. He was born on 29 August 1809 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^2,3 He was the son of Rev. Abiel Holmes and Sarah Wendell.¹ He was a descendant of John Holmes, who settled at Woodstock, Conn., in 1686, and of Evert Jansen Wendell, who emigrated from Eraden, East Friesland, Holland, and settled in Albany, N.Y., about 1640. His paternal grandfather was a captain in the British colonial army in the French and Indian war, and later served as a surgeon in the Revolutionary army. His father, a graduate in theology from Yale, and an earnest Calvinist, was pastor for forty years over the First Church, Cambridge. Mass.

The religious training of Oliver's childhood made a deep impression upon his sensitive and poetic nature and from early manhood he was an aggressive Unitarian in direct opposition to the Calvinism of his father. He first attended a "dame school," kept by Mrs. Prenriss, and from his tenth until his fifteenth year he continued his education at a school in Cambridge-port, under Winslow Biglow, where he had as classmates Richard Henry. Dana, Margaret Fuller, and Alfred Lee, afterward bishop of Delaware. From Cambridge he was sent to Phillips academy at Andover, Mass., with the hope that he might incline to the ministry. There he made his first attempt at rhyme in the translation of the first book of Vergil's Æneid? He was graduated from Harvard in 1829 with William H. Channing, Prof. Benjamin Pierce, James Freeman Clarke, the Rev. S. F. Smith, and Benjamin R. Curtis. He roomed in Sloughton ball; was a frequent contributor to college publications; wrote and delivered the poem at commencement, and was one of sixteen of that class whose scholarship admitted them to the Phi Beta Kappa society. His cousin, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner and John Lothtop Motley were in attendance at Harvard, although not his classmates. He attended the Dane law school in 1899, remaining one year, and in that year devoted more the to verse writing than he did to Blackstone. In 1830, on reading a newspaper paragraph to the effect that the frigate Constitution was condemned by the navy department to be destroyed, he wrote on the impulse of the moment "Old Ironsides" which appeared first in the Boston Daily Advertiser, and quickly travelled through every newspaper in the United States, saving the vessel from destruction and bringing fame to the author. The following year he studied medicine at a private school under Dr. James Jackson, and in 1833 studied in the hospitals of Paris and London, spending his vacations in travel. He returned to Cambridge in December, 1835, received the M.D. degree from Harvard in 1836, and at once commenced his professional career. The same year he published his first volume of poems, which contained forty-five pieces. He received three of the Boylston prizes for medical dissertations and the three essays were published in 1838. He was professor of anatomy and physiology in Dartmouth college, 1838-40.

He bought a house in Montgomery place, which afterward became Bosworth street, and there his three children were born: His wife died at their Beacon street home in 1888. In 1843 he published an essay on the "Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever," and on this rests his claim to having made an original and valuable discovery for medical science, which called forth at the time a most hostile argument from the two leading American professors of obstetrics, Professors H. L. Hedge and C. D. Meigs, of Philadelphia. He was appointed Parkman professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard University Medical school in 1847, and occasionally overstepped the strict boundaries of these departments to give instruction in microscopy, psychology and kindred subjects. He relinquished his medical practice and was dean of the medical school, 1847-53. In 1849 he built a house at Pittsfield, Mass., upon the old family place on the road to Lenox, in a township which had belonged to one of his Dutch ancestors in 1735, and there spent his summers until 1856, having as neighbors and associates, Nathaniel Hawthorne, G. P. R. James, Herman Melville, Miss Sedgwick and Fanny Kemble. In 1859 he delivered in several cities a course of lectures on the English Poets of the Nineteenth Century, twelve of which were given before the Lowell Institute. Dr. Holmes was a favorite with the lecture bureaus, and had no lack of engagements; and in his medical lectures at Harvard the last period was assigned to him, because he alone could hold the attentlon of his exhausted audience, listening to the fifth consecutive lecture. As a lecturer he was interesting, original and stimulating. He was wont to speak of occupying not a "chair," but a "settee" of medicine. He invented the arrangement of the stereoscope, afterward universally used, but obtained no patent for an article from which he might have made a fortune, "not caring," as he expressed it, "to be known as the patentee of a pill or of a peeping contrivance."

He was one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, and gave the magazine its name, contributing to it a series of conversational papers entitled The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), which contained some of his best poems. This was followed by a second series, The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), and after a long interval, appeared The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872). He contributed to the Atlantic the serial novels: Elsie Venner (1861); The Guardian Angel (1867); A Mortal Antipathy (1885); Our Hundred Days in Europe (1887); Over the Teacups (1890). He was identified with the magazine more closely than any other person, and for a longer period. On Dec. 3, 1879, the editors gave a breakfast in his honor, he having passed his seventieth birthday, and Dr. Holmes read the poem The Iron Gate, written for the occasion. He removed from Montgomery place to a house on Charles street, on the riverside, in 1867, and in 1870 to Beacon street, where he lived the rest of his days, making Beverly Farms his summer home. He resigned his professorship at Harvard in 1882, and was immediately made professor emeritus, a rare distinction for Harvard to confer. From that time he lived a retired life in Boston, but continued his writings, "full of the same shrewd sense, wise comment and tender thought" that characterized them from the start. He made a second visit to Europe in 1886, with his daughter, and was everywhere warmly welcomed. He spent most of the time in England and Scotland, where he received the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford university, and that of LL.D. from Edinburgh. He was often called "our poet of occasion," being always ready when called upon to contribute a poem or an essay, giving the best his genius afforded. His writing never wholly weaned him from the medical profession, which he loved strongly because he loved human nature. Besides the works already mentioned, he prepared with Dr. Jacob Bigelow, Marshall Hall's Theory and Practice of Medicine (1839); and is the author of: Lectures on Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions (1849); Report on Medical Literature (1848); Currents and Countercurrents in Medical Science (1861); Borderland in some Provinces of Medical Science (1862); Soundings from the Atlantic (1864); Mechanism in Thoughts and Morals (1871); Memoir of John Lothrop Motley (1879); Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884); Before the Curfew (1888); poetry: Urania (1846); Astrea (1850); Songs in Many Keys (1861 ); Songs of Many Seasons (1875); The Iron Gate and Other Poems (1880). His poems were subsequently collected into three volumes under the title: The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. See Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, by John Torrey Morse, Jr. (1896), and Life of Holmes, by Emma E. Brown (rev. ed., 1895.)⁴ Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes married Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of Judge Charles Jackson and Frances Cabot, on 15 June 1840 in King's Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts.^2,5 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes died on 7 October 1894 in 296 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of 85.^2,3 The burial service, held at King's Chapel, was conducted by the Rev. E.E. Hale and he was buried at Mount Auburn.⁴