Author: Holder, Henry Evans
Biography:
HOLDER, Henry Evans (1758-1801: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 17 Aug. 1758 and baptised on 27 Aug. at St. Joseph’s Barbados, the son of Brigadier General Henry Evans Holder (1725-71), a judge and owner of a sugar plantation at Joe’s River, Barbados, and his second wife, Abel Dudley Alleyne. Nothing is known of his education. He married Rebecca Hothersall (1757-87) on 5 Sept. 1779 at St. John’s, Barbados. They had a son, Henry Evans Holder. He then married his cousin Elizabeth Murray Holder (1766-1848) at St. Joseph’s, Barbados, 3 January 1788. The marriage settlement transferred the plantation (including slaves) at Joe’s River to them. Ordained priest in 1782, he was later appointed vicar of St. John’s, Barbados. However, for reasons unknown he returned to England in 1791 and initially went to Bristol from where he signed the preface to Discourses on Various Subjects, Delivered in the Island of Barbadoes (1791-2) and seems to have published Miscellaneous Poems (1792) but no copy is extant. He then went to London where he preached A Sermon (1792) for the Magdalen Chapel. He responded to John Marjoribank’s (q.v.) fiercely abolitionist poem, Slavery: An Essay in Verse (1786) with Fragments of a Poem (1792), a defence of slave-owners. The Monthly Review (Oct. 1792, 215) accused him of “prostituting the powers of versification.” He seems to have run into financial difficulty and spent time in the King’s Bench, 1795-1800. He may have written the novel The Secluded Man (1798). He died on 5 Oct. 1801 at lodgings in St. Martin Coney Street, York, and was buried three days later. It is not known why he was in York. His will left £200 p.a. to Mary Taylor “known now by the name of Mrs Holder who resided with me in the Fleet Prison” and other bequests to fellow-prisoners. His finances and private life are therefore something of a mystery. (ancestry.co.uk 13 Jun. 2022; LBS, Henry Evans Holder I, II, III; CCEd 13 Jun. 2022; Bath Chronicle 26 Apr. 1792; York Herald 31 Oct. 1801; EN1, 744; Watkins, 269; Marriage Settlement 1788, Bristol Archives 8973) AA
Other Names:
- H. E. Holder