William Curry Holden

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For other persons named William Holden, see William Holden (disambiguation).

William Curry Holden (July 19, 1896 - April 21, 1993) was a historian and archaeologist who in 1937 became the first director of the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. During his tenure, the museum gained regional and state recognition for excellence. Holden, known as Curry Holden, also guided forward the plans for a new museum building, which was dedicated on November 11, 1970. The complex includes a science training program, the National Ranching Heritage Center, Windmill Plaza, and Planetarium.

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[edit] Early years, education, military

Holden was one of three sons born in Coolidge in Limestone County in east central Texas to Robert Lee Holden and the former Grace Davis. The Holden and Davis families moved west toward Colorado City, the seat of Mitchell County located on the South Plains. He was reared on a farm near Rotan in neighboring Fisher County, where he completed high school in 1914.

He quickly procured teacher certification through the former Stamford Junior College, In 1915, he accepted a position at tiny Pleasant Valley in Wichita County near Wichita Falls, where he was the only instructor of forty-seven students in nine classes. He organized a literary club and basketball teams and led the students to victory in the county interscholastic meeting.

Holden studied Texas history under Professor Joseph A. Hill at West Texas A&M University (then West Texas Normal College) in Canyon (Randall County) during the summers of 1917 and 1918.

During World War I, Holden served in the Eighty-sixth United States Army Infantry at San Antonio.

[edit] UT and McMurry College

After his military service, Holden obtained a job as principal at his alma mater, Rotan High School. Soon, however, he entered the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied under the historian Eugene C. Barker. He was also heavily influenced by Professor Walter Prescott Webb, author of the seminal The Great Plains. During most of the 1920s, Holden taught history at the college level while still continuing his own studies at UT. He earned his bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas. He also studied briefly at the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In 1923, Holden organized and chaired the history department at the newly established McMurry College, a Methodist-affiliated institution in Abilene in west Texas. He encouraged his students to collect and preserve family and regional histories, including newspapers. He would utilize these materials in writing his doctoral dissertation, published in 1930 under the name Alkali Trails. He also launched a course at McMurry in archeology and took students to research sites along the Canadian River.

[edit] 40 years at Texas Tech University

In 1929, Holden joined the Texas Tech faculty to instruct history and anthropology. He remained there for more than four decades. He became chairman of the history department in 1936. The history and social sciences building there is named "Holden Hall". In 1938, Holden was named dean and director of anthropological, historical, and social-science research.

Holden was elevated to dean of the Texas Tech Graduate School in 1945, a position that he retained until 1950. He launched an accredited program in four doctoral fields, including history. He received the Distinguished Faculty Emeritus Award of the College of Arts and Sciences and, in 1965, was named Distinguished Director Emeritus of the Texas Tech Museum.

[edit] Archeological excavations

Excavations undertaken in 1930 and 1931 in the Texas Panhandle uncovered the Saddleback and Antelope Creek ruins on the Canadian River. In 1932, Holden directed a field school at the Tecolote ruin near Las Vegas in northern New Mexico. In 1933, 1935, and 1937, he uncovered the Arrowhead Ruin, including a rare D-shaped kiva.

Holden's students excavated and restored this Early Glaze-period pueblo ruin located east of Santa Fe. In 1950, he directed excavations at the Bonnell site near Ruidoso on a mesa ruin similar to the Antelope Creek site. In 1937, Holden found evidence of Southwestern prehistoric culture at Murrah Cave on the lower Pecos River. In 1938, he investigated Blue Mountain Cave west of Odessa, the seat of Ector County, Texas. In 1940, he investigated Fingerpoint Cave in Borden County on the South Plains.

Holden's most significant archeological discovery occurred ironically near his home in Lubbock in 1937, when two of his students found a Paleo-Indian flint point in Yellow House Canyon. The flint point was on the bank of a small natural lake that the city was dredging to open an ancient spring. Holden played a crucial role in the long struggle to preserve the site. In 1989, the site was designated the Lubbock Lake National Historic and State Archeological Landmark.

Holden led archeological field trips to Mexico in 1934, 1936, 1938, and 1940. In the spring of 1934, he took students on an expedition to study the bellicose Yaqui of the state of Sonora. Texas Tech sponsored a second expedition in 1935. Thereafter, Holden published Studies of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico. The report touches on Yaqui education, marriage, child-rearing, and household economy.

[edit] Building the Museum of Texas Tech

In 1935, Holden organized the West Texas Museum Association and sought funds from the Texas Centennial Commission for the Tech museum. He led a "march to Austin" to convince the legislature to fund $160,750 for the facility, but only $25,000 was forthcoming. With private funds and university matching, the first museum building was dedicated in 1950 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the institution. Holden had also once run unsuccessfully for the Texas House of Representatives.

The museum first focused on the Southwestern region with exhibits on history, science, and art. Artist Peter Hurd was commissioned in 1952 to paint a fresco in the rotunda at the entrance to the museum to depict life on the South Plains between 1890 and 1925.

In 1955, Holden and other supporters organized the Southwest Collection and Archives, which contained West Texas ranch records that he had collected over the years.

A popular feature of the museum is the outdoor Ranching Heritage Center, which has been assembled over the years from ranches throughout the South Plains.

[edit] Holden the author

Holden authored or coauthored more than twelve books and forty-two articles and pamphlets in professional and commercial journals. Four works focused on the Yaqui Indians. His only novel, Hill of the Rooster in 1956 traces the life of a woman called "Chepa" during the Yaqui rebellion of 1926-1927.

Holden also wrote Teresita (1978), which describes the life of Teresa Urrea, a Mexican folk healer.

Other Holden books included:

  • A Yaqui Life (coauthored in 1971 with daughter Jane Holden Kelley)
  • Rollie Burns (1932)
  • Spur Ranch (1934)
  • A Ranching Saga: The Lives of William Electious Halsell and Ewing Halsell

In 1972 Texas Tech named the first museum building Holden Hall, the first such honor accorded to a living member of the faculty. A bronze bust of Holden by Lubbock sculptor Glenna Goodacre was unveiled in the museum rotunda.

[edit] Marriages and later years

Holden was twice married. His first wife, the former Olive Price, died in 1937, eleven years after their marriage. Their only child, Jane Kelley, became a professor of archaeology at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Olive assisted Holden in the development of the anthropology program at Texas Tech and in the design and construct of an adobe house near the campus.

On March 26, 1939, Holden married the former Frances Virginia "Fran" Mayhugh, a native of tiny Running Water in Hale County north of Lubbock. She graduated from Plainview High School and received a master of arts degree in history from Texas Tech in 1940. She was associate director of the Tech Museum from 1940 to 1965. She founded the museum's Southwestern Art Collection and the Women's Council.

Holden retired from Texas Tech in 1970. In his long retirement, William and Frances Holden and his wife built adobe houses in Pueblo-revival style. These buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places and are designed as state and city archaeological and historic landmarks.

Mrs. Holden died on August 20, 2007, fourteen years after her husband's passing. William Holden's younger brother, Tom Calloway Holden of Kerrville, a retired educator, died at the age of 103 only sixteen days before the passing of Frances Holden.

The Holdens are interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery. They were Methodist.

Holden is honored with his statue by Lubbock native Glenna Goodacre, located in the rotunda of the Texas Tech Museum.

[edit] References