The obituary of an abolitionist: John W. Holden

Doris Christensen/Find a Grave

I came across John W. Holden's obituary recently while checking back issues of Chariton newspapers to see what was going on in Lucas County 120 years ago --- during February of 1899. John, a tailor by profession, died of the complications of a stroke and old age at the age of 79 on Feb. 23 of that year (the obituary, apparently, gives his age mistakenly as 80) and was buried in the Chariton Cemetery.

The obituary, written by his son, John L. Holden, is unique because of the emphasis given to his record as an abolitionist more than 30 years after the Civil War had ended. While Lucas County and Iowa in general had been staunchly Union, the initial unifying cause is expressed well in the title of Thomas R. Baker's excellent "The Sacred Cause of Union: Iowa in the Civil War."

While there certainly were many active abolitionists in the state, for most Iowans the institution of slavery --- even though not favored --- remained something of an abstraction until after the war was under way. Iowa was a free state with very few black residents going into the war so there were few reference points. It was determination to preserve the union that motivated most Iowans as the threat of war intensified.

But for Holden, that was not the case, according to his son. He had been a staunch enemy of the institution since witnessing the sale of a slave as a youth in Missouri and that became a motivating factor in his life. So this is an interesting record --- even though John and his wife, Mary, did not arrive in Chariton until the mid-1870s. Here's the obituary:

+++

John Wallace Holden was born at Georgetown, Kentucky, October 7, 1819 and died in Chariton, Iowa, February 23, 1899, aged 80 years, 4 months and 16 days.

At a very early age he was taken with the family to Indiana or Missouri, the writer does not know which state first, but at the age of twelve years he was living at Fayette, Missouri, at which time and place he entered his apprenticeship to the tailor's trade.

While at this place, passing along the street one day and seeing a crowd near his line of march, he turned aside to investigate, It proved to be a sheriff's sale of a slave woman and she was just being forcibly separated from her child when he reached the scene. The sights and sounds accompanying the separation were so heartrending that he could not endure them, but ran away as fast as he could. From that moment he was an uncompromising hater of the "Divine institution of slavery."

Soon after the expiration of his apprenticeship he went to Indiana. In those early days boys were apprenticed for seven years, and accordingly, he must have been not less than nineteen years of age.

Not long after reaching Indiana he was converted and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and for nearly sixty years, or until his death, he maintained a standing in the church consistent with his profession. He was active in all the various departments of church work, the Sunday School, the "Class Meeting" and the weekly prayer meeting.

About the time he became of age he was married to Miss Ann Early, daughter of James Early, who removed from Virginia to Indiana when it was still a territory. Seven children were born to them, of whom only three are living.

His wife died in Ripley county, Indiana, on July 4, 1854. Her death was an irreparable loss to the family, which was never again united under one roof. The writer's recollections of him and home begin at Frankfort, Clinton county, Indiana and co-extensive with them is the memory of the family altar and family worship.

When the firing on Fort Sumpter in 1861 called the nation to arms, he enlisted in the 12th Regt. Ind. Vol. Inf. and served until discharged for disability before the end of the term of enlistment. At the time of the Morgan raid into Ohio and Indiana he joined a Home Legion Regiment, and served as long as the occasion required. He was an ardent lover of the Union, a hater of "Slavery, the sum of all villanies," and of "Secession" and rebellion in its support. And he took especial satisfaction and pride in the fact that the whole fighting force of his family were in the Union army before the end of the first month of the war.

During all the years that the slavery question was the subject of such rancorous political debate, no one who knew him ever had to guess where he stood. He was an Abolitionist at a time and in a locality when and where to be known as such was to be classed as "scum" and the "scourgings" of the earth --- a "black abolitionist."

Neither abuse, contemptuous epithets or threats of personal violence ever deterred him from the fullest and freest expression of his sentiments and principles. He was a Whig, of the Abolition section of the party, and when that party went out of existence he became a Republican and continued with that party until the last presidential campaign, when he declared himself a Democrat.

In October, 1861, he was married to Mary E. Jennett at Kokomo, Howard county, Indiana, but soon removed to Greentown, in the same county. Near the close of the rebellion he removed to Holt county, Missouri, where the writer visited him early in 1866 while on his way to Ottumwa, Iowa, to visit a brother and other relatives. He concluded to come also and make his home permanently in Iowa.

The trip was made "overland" in a "prairie schooner." We reached Ottumwa in March, 1866. In 1873 he concluded to go to Kansas to live with his youngest son, Charles, but after arriving there the grasshoppers destroyed all the crops around them and they returned to Iowa, settling in Chariton, where he remained until his death.

He has filled all the minor offices in the church and was fifty years a "Class Leader." As to his record here, it needs no words of eulogy. He was a righteous man.  --- J.L.H.

+++

John L. Holden, author of the obituary and also a Civil War veteran, was born during 1842 in Indiana. A harness maker by trade, he roamed the West until 1893, when at age 50 he came to Chariton to live with his father and stepmother and care for them in their old age. He went to work in the harness shop of Adam C. Riebel and worked there until Riebel retired in 1920, two years before John L. died, also at the age of  79.

According to his own obituary, "Mr. Holden's life was marked by industry, honesty and conscientious devotion to duty as he understood it. He was a deep student of books and men, a great reader of the Bible. He loved his friends and was true to them. He was one of those persons whose real worth is known only to those most intimately associated with him, and by those who knew him best he will be held in sacred memory through the coming years."