San Joaquin County
Biographies
BENJAMIN
BENJAMIN
A native of the Granite State, so many of whose sons have gone forth as leaders in the professional and commercial life of the nation, Benjamin Holt was born in Merrimack County, N.H., on January 1, 1849, the seventh of eleven children born to William K. and Harriet Parker Holt. The public schools in the neighborhood of his boyhood home furnished his early education, supplemented by a course of study at an academy in Tilton, N.H., and later, at a Baptist institution of learning in New London, Conn. In 1868, with his brothers, W. Harrison, A. Frank and Charles H. Holt, Benjamin Holt began the manufacture of wagon spokes and hubs, and in 1873, he established his plant in Concord, N.H., greatly enlarging its capacity and adding to its output the manufacture of felloes, wheels, bodies, and running gears. Here he continued in business for ten years, building up an extensive trade and becoming well known in commercial and manufacturing circles throughout the East.
His brother, Charles H. Holt, had come to San Francisco, Cal., in the early days and established a wholesale hardwood and wheel business. In this enterprise he was joined in 1871 by William Harrison Holt, A. Frank Holt, and Benjamin Holt, although the latter did not come to California until 1883, when he had disposed of his interests at Concord N.H. This year, 1883, marked the beginning of this great industry at Stockton, as at this time he and Charles H. Holt there took up the manufacture of wheels and wagon material under the name of The Stockton Wheel Company. In 1892, the name of the firm was changed to its present one-The Holt Manufacturing Company. Throughout the entire history of the Holt Company, Benjamin Holt was the mechanical head of the company and its president since its incorporation in 1892. It was he who perfected the combined harvesters which greatly reduced the cost and labor oh harvesting grain by combining the operations of cutting, threshing, and cleaning. It was he who invented the self propelled combined harvester, a combination of tractor and harvester. It was he who invented the “caterpillar” tractor, which proved the only solution of the problem of traction on soft and sandy places and over rough ground. The British tank, which struck such terror in the ranks of the German armies when it first appeared on the battle line in France, was founded directly upon the principle of this invention. During the campaign in Belgium, at one of the most trying periods in the history of the Allies, General E. D. Swinton, of the British army, saw one of Holt’s caterpillars in action, and from the underlying principle of its traction conceived the idea of the fighting tank, and during the war General Swinton came all the way to Stockton to meet Benjamin Holt, the inventor, to pay tribute to his inventive genius and to tell the story of the origin of the tank. More than 100 inventions cover his achievements in the line of industry, and they have been material factors in revolutionizing methods in agriculture, not alone in the cultivation of vast additional areas, but in the solution of the labor problems of the farmer through the reduction of the manual labor necessary, particularly in the busy harvest season. Two large factories compromise the Holt industry; one at Peoria Ill, and the Stockton plant.
In 1890 Mr. Holt was married to Miss Anna Brown, a daughter of the well-known ‘49er, pioneer, miner, and later San Joaquin County farmer, the late Benjamin E. Brown of Stockton. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Holt became the parents of the following children; Alfred B. Holt, of Peoria, Ill; William Knox Holt of Stockton; Mrs. Anne Holt Atherton, wife of Judge Warren Atherton, of Stockton; Edison Ames Holt, of Stockton; and Benjamin Dean Holt, of Peoria. Mrs. Benjamin Holt, the widowed mother, continues to reside at 548 East Park St, Stockton, loved and respected by all.
While Mr. Holt had been in failing health for about a month, death was not believed to be imminent, so that when the end came suddenly on December 5, 1920, at St. Joseph’s Home, it came with a shock to the entire community. The mind of the great inventor was clear and active to the last, and one of his last requests is said to have been for information concerning an experimental machine in course of development at the plant.
Thoroughly democratic, Benjamin Holt moved about his great plant generally in his shirt sleeves, calling by their first names employees who had long been associated with him. In one corner of the works a room was set apart for him. This was “Uncle Ben’s” experimental room, and here he worked out the mechanical problems of the many devices that will ever be associated with his name. Modest and unassuming to an unusual degree, he shrank from any publicity, and when General Swinton came to Stockton to publicly acknowledge England’s debt of gratitude to the inventor-a notable occasion in Stockton’s war activities-it was with great difficulty that Mr. Holt was induced to occupy a seat of honor on the platform with the distinguished British officer at the mass meeting held at the auditorium. Fame came to him, but the simple routine of his life was undisturbed; the friends of his early days were still the friends of his choice. He was still Ben Holt-unchanged by the plaudits of the multitude; plain, honest, industrious, and true.
Transcribed by: Adrian
Welling.
Source: Tinkham,
George H., History of San Joaquin
County, California , Pages 339-340. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2010 Adrian
Welling.
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