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     Zebediah S. Holt was born on 11 May 1797 in Wilton, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. He was the son of Barachias Holt and Elizabeth Shattuck.

     

She married Augustus Goddard Peabody, son of Augustus Peabody and Miranda Goddard, on 21 May 1856, and had three children.¹

     

He married Margaret Appleton, daughter of John Appleton and Elizabeth Rogers.

     Edward Augustus Holyoke was born on 1 August 1728 in Marblehead, Essex County, Massachusetts, . According to family tradition he was given his middle name because of the month of his birth; his elders and contemporaries always called him 'Neddie.' When he was seven his father became president of Harvard College and his family moved to Wadsworth House. He was admitted to the college in July, 1742, the written part of his entrance examination being a Latin essay on the topic 'Labor Improbus omnia vincit,' on which he labored for a week. The next three weeks he spent in making the required copy of the college laws.

Neddie was below average height, but his small body was strong and agile, and fired by a vivacious disposition. The fact that he lived at home helped to keep him out of trouble except for one occasion after which he was fined for drinking prohibited liquors. To occupy his active hands and mind he took lessons in paiting and French, and although that language was not a part of the curriculum he mnastered it well enough to make a declamation in the college chapel. He was fascinated by those problems of science which might yield to the skilled manipulation of apparatus, and for his Quaestio he held the megative of 'An Concursus Axium opticorum per se sufficiat, at Solvendum simplicem Visionem?' Thanks in part to a Hollis Scholarship the total expense of his education was only £39 10s, but much of that remained on the college books unpaid for twenty years. In July, 1747, he began to read medicine with Dr. Thomas Berry (A.B. 1712) of Ipswich, with whom he remained for two years. In June, 1749, he hung out his shingle in Salem, where he boarded with Madam Turner on the corner of Essex and Union streets. It was by incredible perseverence that Dr. Holyoke established his practice. He trudged five or six miles every day on the round of his patients and kept this up for more than fifty years, for when he could afford a horse he found that he could never learn to keep the animal from slipping its bridle. So assiduously did he apply himself to his work that during all of his hundred years he never traveled more than fifty miles from the place of his birth, and the only occasion on which he spent more than a night or two away from home was that on which he spent more than a night or two away from home was that on which he went down to Boston to take the smallpox inoculation.¹ He was the son of Edward Holyoke and Margaret Appleton.

He married Judith Pickman on 5 June 1755.¹

He married Mary Vial on 22 November 1759.¹

In 1763 he bought the Bowditch house in Essex Street, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Dr. Holyoke made a study of his practice which, so far as we know, has no rival in the archives of medicine. Although he sometimes made a hundred calls in a day, he made a record of each, filling eventually a hundred and twenty volumes of notes from which he compiled statistics. In 1755 he performed a delivery for the first time, and soon he drove the midwives of the town out of business. Troubled by the memory of the death of his first wife, he kept abreast of the latest European developments in practice, but because of sympathy for the mothers he differed sharply with the young physicians who used their instruments to effect 'successful' deliveries regardless of results. Dr. Holyoke, always social, became even more so as he became busier and older. Reluctantly he left off drawing and painting because they took too much time. He worked out the family genealogy, but his records, which he had lent to Thomas Hutchinson (A.B. 1727), were destroyed when the latter's mansion was sacked by the mob. For a while longer he wrote verse, all of which has a medical flavor:
The gen'rous Zephyr drives the chilling blast,
And poisonous Fogs and Vapors all disperse,
The vital Fluid by our Lungs inhal'd
Revives the sluggish Blood with active Spring,
And swifter drives the purple Current round,
Replete with Life, with vigorous Health endow'd.

He enjoyed skating and dancing, at which he was skillful, until he decided that his advancing years made these amusements unbecoming. Then he built up his library, had a personal bookplate engraved, and joined in founding the Salem library. His passion for truth and accuracy was as rare [i.e., as unusually strong] as his open-mindedness. In his unceasing search for facts he performed autopsies on the bodies of his own children. Holyoke's passionate search for truth led him into pure science in which his work with the phenomena of color and vision brought no fruitful results, but he did discover the power of evaporation to produce cold before that fact had been published in America. He tried his best to introduce an 'American Thermometer' on which the freezing point of water was 1000 and that of mercury was zero. His demonstrations attracted the keen interest of men like Manasseh Cutler:

Mr. [President] Willard and I appointed this day to wait on Dr. Holyoke to see some experiments performed upon a new glass machine constructed for impregnating water with fixed air. The air passed through capillar tubes, alkaline and vitriolic acids, in astate of effervescence to the water, and gave it the taste of the acid, resembling beer or bottled cider.

The good Doctor would have been most distressed had he known that future millions of hot Americans would consume oceans of these 'weak small Liquids' without a thought of first fortifying themselves with rum.

In his youth Holyoke had been greatly impressed by displays of the Aurora Borealis which much exceeded anything which earlier generations of colonists had seen, and he never ceased to search for an explanation of the phenomenon. His studies led him into astronomy, and he made accurate observations of the transit of Venus in 1769 and of the transit of Mercuty in 1782, communicating his results to other scientists. In 1783 he received the first M.D. granted by Harvard, and when this had become a common professional degree, the university further honored him, in 1815, with an LL.D. On the death of Peter Frye '44 in 1820 he became the oldest living graduate, and eight years later he became the first Harvard man to reach a hundred. This attracted considerable attention because English statisticians were denying that there was a single authenticated example of anyone living to that age. When in his nineties Dr. Holyoke still performed delicate operations, and on the morning of his hundredth birthday he shaved and dressed himself and walked briskly to the Essex House to attend a great dinner in his honor. The Doctor walked home steadily and sat down to write out at great length the secret of his longevity. This was essentially moderation, with plenty of fruit. His drink was restricted to a half pint at dinner and another with his pipe afterward. It consisted of two parts of rum, three of cider, and ten of water. His nicotine was restricted to two pipes a day and 'a small piece of pigtail tobacco' held in his mouth from breakfast to dinner, and another from dinner to tea.¹

His wife Mary had died on April 15, 1802, and from that day he was cared for by his daughter Margaret, his dear companion who shared his interests. Her death on January 25, 1825, was a crushing blow. With great interest he kept a careful record of his dissolution, arguing with his fellow physicians about each symptom, and trying to draw conclusions about the general nature of senility.¹

He died on 31 March 1829 in Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, at age 100 . When his death came, all of the church bells of the town were tolled, an honor hitherto shown only to presidents of the United States. He must have been delighted when an autopsy showed, as he had maintained and his colleagues had doubted, that a fluid had formed in his brain. Following his instructions, they made a thorough dissection.¹

     Margaret Holyoke was the daughter of Edward Augustus Holyoke.¹

She died on 25 January 1825.¹

     Priscilla Holyoke is the daughter of Edward Holyoke and Margaret Appleton.¹

     Catherine Lynn Homan was born on 14 December 1958 in Saint Louis, St. Louis County, Missouri.¹

She married Timothy Michael Griffith, son of Thomas William Griffith and Janet Jane Burns, in March 1980 in Saint Louis.¹ She and Timothy Michael Griffith were divorced about 1987.¹

     

He married Hannah Cary, daughter of Beriah Cary and Mary Cook.¹

     

She married Peter Sargent, son of Stephen Sargent and Judith Ordway, as his second wife.¹

She died on 22 March 1813.¹

     Caroline Wyman Hood was born on 21 March 1892 in Derry, Rockingham County, New Hampshire.¹ She was the daughter of Charles Harvey Hood and Katherine Wyman Eastman.¹

She died on 13 December 1897 in Somerville, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, at age 5.¹

     Charles Harvey Hood was born on 26 February 1860 in Derry, Rockingham County, New Hampshire.¹ He was the son of Harvey Perley Hood and Caroline Laura Corwin.¹

He married Katherine Wyman Eastman on 2 June 1886 in Derry.¹

In 1906, Charles Harvey Hood was a milk contractor, and resided at 2 Benton Rd., Somerville, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.¹

     Clara Rebecca Hood was born on 22 October 1854 in Charlestown, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.¹ She was the daughter of Harvey Perley Hood and Caroline Laura Corwin.¹

She married Greenleaf Kelley Bartlett on 4 June 1902.¹
As of 1906, Clara and Greenleaf lived at Lawrence, Essex County, Massachusetts, without children.¹

     Edward John Hood was born on 26 October 1864 in Derry, Rockingham County, New Hampshire.¹ He was the son of Harvey Perley Hood and Caroline Laura Corwin.¹

He married Harriet Geddes in June 1894 in Winchendon, Worcester County, Massachusetts.¹
As of 1906, Edward lived at Somerville, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.¹

     Edward P. Hood was born on 3 March 1838 in Chelsea, Orange County, Vermont.¹ He was the son of Harvey Hood and Rebecca Smith.¹

He died on 6 November 1860 in Derry, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, at age 22.¹