My Genealogy Hound

REV. W. J. HOLLAND, D. D., Ph. D. On the paternal side, Dr. Holland is descended from Philemon Holland, the celebrated English translator and author. His father, Rev. F. R. Holland, a North Carolinian by birth, has held a prominent place in the ministry of the Unitas Fratrum; on the maternal side he is a descendant of Rev. Francis Doughty, a Presbyterian clergyman, who, in 1643, preached the first sermon in the English language on Manhattan Island. He afterward preached to the Puritans in Maryland, of which colony his brother-in-law, Capt. William Stone, was governor, and there he died. His great-granddaughter, Mary Doughty, married Col. Timothy Horsfield, of Staten Island, one of the founders of the Moravian Church in New York, who subsequently removed to Northampton county, Pa., and became an active colonial officer. His son, Joseph Horsfield, who was a member of the first Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania, married a daughter of Daniel Benezet, and was the father of Eliza Horsfield, who married Jacob Wolle, the son of a Moravian missionary in the West Indies.

Jacob was sent when a child to be educated in the United States, and made his home in Bethlehem, Pa., occupying his time during the latter half of his life mainly in the study of botany. It is from the Wolles and the Horsfields. as well as from his father, who is a well-known conchologist, that Dr. Holland inherits his strong predilection for natural science. Dr. Thomas Horsfield, a descendant of Col. Timothy, was the naturalist of Sir Stamford Raffles’ expedition to the east, and for many years the Curator of the British East India Company’s Museum in London, and a recognized authority on the botany and zoology of the Indo-Malayan region. Rev. Francis Wolle, of Bethlehem, a cousin of Dr. Holland, is the highest living authority in America on microscopic botany. Dr. Holland’s mother’s maiden name was Augusta Wolle.

The doctor was born Aug. 16, 1848, at Bethany, a mission station of the Moravian Church on the island of Jamaica, where his father was then a missionary. He graduated at the Moravian College and Theological Seminary at Bethlehem in 1867, and at Amherst College in 1869. After two years’ experience as a teacher in Massachusetts, he entered the Princeton Theological Seminary, whence he graduated in course in 1874. He immediately entered on the pastorate of Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, where he has since remained.

Dr. Holland was married in January, 1879, to Carrie, the youngest daughter of the late John Moorhead, of Pittsburgh. In 1877 he visited Europe as a delegate to the first Pan-Presbyterian Council, which met in Edinburgh, and in 1879 he again visited Europe as a delegate to the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Basle. In 1887 he went to Japan as the naturalist of the expedition sent by the National Academy of Science and the United States Navy Department to observe the total eclipse of the sun of that year. Several of his occasional lectures and discourses have been published; he has been a frequent contributor to the dailies, and has contributed many papers to the scientific journals, himself drawing and engraving most of the illustrations which accompany them.

Dr. Holland is a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and of various other learned societies in this country. He is also a member of the Entomological Societies of London and France; is a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and has been led to make lengthy researches into local history; and at the request of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh is engaged in the preparation of a history of that venerable body, of which, for many years, he was the clerk. He is one of the trustees of the Pennsylvania Female College, and of the School of Design for Women, Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of the Western Theological Seminary, and President of the Iron City Microscopical Society. He is also the historian of the Presbyterian Churches of Allegheny county in this work.