Mrs. Mary Austin Holley, the historian of Texas, was born at New
Haven, Connecticut, in 1786. On January 1, 1805, she was married to
the Rev. Horace Holley, who, in the fall of that year, became pastor
of a church at Greenfield Hill, Connecticut. Mrs. Holley, of course,
was in Boston with her husband from 1809 to 1818; and she accompanied
him to Lexington, Kentucky, when he accepted the presidency of
Transylvania University. Mrs. Holley was one of the few persons whom
the eccentric scientist, Rafinesque, set down as having been very kind
to him while he was connected with the University. She lived in
Lexington until the spring of 1827, when she went with her husband to
New Orleans. She wrote a poem, _On Leaving Kentucky_, the first stanza
of which is as follows:
Farewell to the land in which broad rivers flow,
And vast prairies bloom as in Eden's young day!
Farewell to the land in which lofty trees grow,
And the vine and the mistletoe's empire display.
She later embarked with her husband for New York, and it was her pen
that so vividly described his death on shipboard. After Dr. Holley's
death his widow returned to Lexington, Kentucky, and wrote the memoir
for Dr. Charles Caldwell's _Discourse on the Genius and Character of the
Rev. Horace Holley, LL. D._ (Boston, 1828). Mrs. Holley left Kentucky in
1831 and emigrated to Texas under the protection of her celebrated
kinsman, General Stephen Fuller Austin, a Transylvania University man,
and the founder of Texas. Her _Texas_ (Lexington, Kentucky, 1836), was
one of the first histories of that country ever published. Mrs. Holley
was a widely read woman, theology being her favorite study, and, like
her husband, she was a Unitarian. In person she was said to be a very
charming woman. Mrs. Holley spent the last several years of her life at
New Orleans, in which city she died on August 2, 1846.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Transylvanian_ (Lexington, January, 1829);
Adams's _Dictionary of American Authors_ (Boston, 1905).