Biography/History

Late in 1847 Devillo R. Holt arrived in Chicago, and shortly thereafter purchased the George Roberts lumber yard on the corner of Market and Madison Streets. This was the starting point of a career, which was to keep D. R. Holt and his sons active in the lumber business for almost a century, and was to mark the Holts as key figures in Wisconsin and Chicago business enterprise during that period.

Devillo R. Holt was born in Watertown, N.Y. on Dec. 27, 1823. He was about twenty years of age when he moved west to enter the employ of the American Fur Company on Mackinac Island. Because of the climate, the enervating character of his work, and the lack of social life Holt abandoned his labors as Indian trader and merchant, and proceeded to Chicago on Oct. 24, 1847. The purchase of the George Roberts lumber yard followed a few weeks later.

During the next decade Holt obtained his manufactured lumber from northern Michigan and northern Wisconsin--Grand River, Muskegon, Masonville, Green Bay, Peshtigo, and various Lake Huron ports. In disposing of his lumber in the Chicago market, Holt had to carry on his wholesale and retail trade through the medium of horse teams, since there was no railroad and no canal in Chicago at the time.

In 1852, Holt temporarily expanded his interests in the direction of lumber manufacturing. In that year he joined with Richard Mason in establishing the firm of Holt and Mason; the partners bought the Ferguson Mill at Little Bay de Noquet near Masonville, Michigan. This mill sold six million feet of lumber annually to Holt's Chicago yard. Sometime in 1857 the firm was dissolved; Holt sold his mill interests to Mason, but retained the lake vessels and the Chicago yard. In 1858, the Chicago yard was destroyed by fire. The blaze had been started by members of the Chicago fire department who were seeking premium payments then offered to the fire companies first on the scene of any fire. Subsequently the men who had set the blaze were sentenced to terms in the state prison.

Late in 1856, D. R. Holt, together with Cyrus McCormick, William B. Ogden, John Wentworth, Grant Goodrich, Walter Newberry, Solomon A. Smith, and Augustus H. Burley, began to lay plans for the founding of a reputable banking institution in Chicago. Their bank, The Merchants Loan and Trust Company, was opened on June 10, 1857. D. R. Holt was a charter member, a stockholder, director, and the bank's cashier until 1862.

The first relations between D. R. Holt and Uri Balcom are obscure. The American Lumberman (p. 51) states that in 1862 the two men entered into a partnership, establishing the firm of Holt and Balcom. In Industrial Chicago: The Lumber Interests (p. 316) it is stated that Balcom bought out Calkins of Holt and Calkins, thus founding Holt and Balcom in 1863. The History of Northern Wisconsin declares that Holt and Calkins was founded in 1863; that Uri Balcom was a third, but unpublicized member of the firm; and that in the fall of 1865 Balcom bought out Calkins' interest, thus founding Holt and Balcom. A journal of the company (Vol. 80 of this collection), for Oct. 1, 1865 says simply, “We, D. R. Holt and Jane E. Balcom having this day October 1st A.D. 1865 entered into an equal co-partnership to do a General Lumber Business under the name and style of Holt and Balcom and to share alike in Gain or Loss, open our Books with the following Resources and Liabilities....” The truth of the matter seems to be that Holt had at least informal business relations with Balcom as early as 1862-1863; and that these relations were formalized in 1865 when Holt joined with Balcom's wife to form Holt and Balcom.

Despite his wife's legal position in the company, it was Uri Balcom who was for all practical purposes the partner of D. R. Holt. Who was Uri Balcom? Balcom was descended from an English family, which had settled in Charlestown, Mass. in 1661. Later the Balcoms had moved to Vermont, then to New York; Uri was born in Oxford, Chenango County, N.Y. on May 17, 1815. At an early age he went to Steuben County, N.Y., and there acquired certain lumber interests. He manufactured lumber, then rafted it down the Susquehanna and its tributaries to the markets of Harrisburg and Baltimore.

In 1856, Balcom moved to Oconto, Wisconsin, where he was to remain for a decade. In that year he organized the lumber firm of Eldred and Balcom; a few years later this firm became Holt, Balcom and Calkins; and as noted before in 1865, Holt and Balcom was formed.

Holt and Balcom immediately acquired large tracts of pine lands and a sawmill at Oconto, Wisconsin. The exact holdings of the company prior to 1884 are not known, but in 1881 it was estimated that the firm owned 100,000 acres of woodland in Oconto and Marinette Counties. In addition to the sawmill, it operated a large general store, a feed mill, four farms, a large boarding house connected with the mill at Oconto, an office in Chicago, cargo vessels on Lake Michigan, and a hotel at the company's Maple Valley farm for the accommodation of teams and men going to the pineries. The Oconto sawmill, built in 1856, remained intact, except for occasional new equipment, until the Holt Lumber Company closed in 1938.

As long as Holt and Balcom remained in partnership, until 1888, nothing but northern pine passed through the Oconto sawmill. The pine were felled in the forests, skidded by oxen to logging roads where they were decked for the spring drive. In the spring the logs were floated to Oconto, and there finished at the sawmill. The sawmill, with a capacity of 125,000 feet of lumber and 40,000 feet of lath per day, turned out its finished product which was then loaded on cargo vessels and shipped to Chicago, Milwaukee, Racine and other southern lake ports.

During this period, the company's officials and its main office were located in Chicago, at the lumber docks on South Water Street. No yard business was done, but rather the lumber was disposed of wholesale by cargo lots to purchasers who visited the docks each morning to inspect cargoes that had arrived during the night. For many years a large part of the company's output went to the Milwaukee market, and most of that to John Schroeder Lumber Co. with whom Holt and Balcom alternated in carrying large accounts payable.

Holt and Balcom was dissolved early in 1888, probably about April 9. The motives and events lying behind the dissolution are not clear, but a superficial examination of the 1887-1888 entries in the Chicago letter books (Vol. 60-67) suggests that (1) the Holts wanted the dissolution, (2) Uri Balcom, Augustus Cole, and T. B. Goodrich were less pleased by the prospect of dissolution, and (3) the dissolution proceedings, begun about Nov. 14, 1887, were not completed for five months because of the difficulty involved in arriving at satisfactory terms. Nothing more is known of the subsequent activities of Balcom. According to Industrial Chicago: the Lumber Interests, p. 456, he died on Nov. 1, 1893.

Once dissolution proceedings were completed, the Holt Lumber Company was incorporated in 1888, with Devillo R. Holt as president, George H. Holt as vice president, Charles S. Holt as secretary, and William A. Holt as treasurer. Henceforth the company remained in family hands until its closing in 1938. After the reorganization, D. R. Holt practically retired from business life. Active management of the company passed to his sons, George and William.

William A. Holt, who was henceforth the key figure in the company, was born in 1865 in Lake Forest, Ill., where the permanent Holt residence was located. He was educated at Lake Forest Academy, and entered the lumber business at the age of seventeen. This he did against the advice of his father who assumed that the north woods would be depleted in a few years. Young Holt's first six years were spent in learning the business thoroughly. This was accomplished by working in the Chicago and Oconto offices, by spending time in the timber tracts, and by making the acquaintance of big-time white pine lumbermen--Isaac Stephenson, A. G. Van Schaick, A. A. Carpenter, Nelson Ludington, George Farnsworth, James C. Brooks, and Daniel Wells. Having learned the business, Holt took over the management of Oconto affairs sometime in 1889.

The formation of Holt Lumber Company was followed by a number of changes in the company's management and operations. For all practical purposes W. A. Holt became the company's chief executive, even though he was technically only treasurer. The Chicago office became little more than an appendage, as lumber was henceforth piled, seasoned and sold from extensive yards adjacent to the mill at Oconto. Furthermore, with pine running out, the company turned to the handling of hemlocks and hardwoods after 1890. Horses, and later tractors, replaced the oxen for skidding purposes; railroads, and subsequently motor trucks, replaced the rivers and streams in hauling logs from the woods to the sawmill. Lake boats were supplanted by the railroad (Chicago and North Western) in hauling the finished lumber to market. It may be said that Holt operations were almost completely revolutionized in the decade between 1886 and 1896.

Upon the death of D. R. Holt in 1899 the presidency passed to George H. Holt, who sold his interests to W. A. Holt in 1922. It seems that the Chicago office was maintained until the death of D. R. Holt; afterwards, there is no ready evidence of its existence. The assumption of the presidency by the younger Holt in 1922 undoubtedly did little more than formalize what had long since become an accomplished fact.

In 1918, the Holt Hardwood Company was incorporated, with W. A. Holt as president. This company devoted to the manufacturing of birch, maple, and oak flooring, is still in existence (1945). In addition to managing the affairs of his hardwood company, W. A. Holt has served for some time as a director of the Northern Hemlock and Hardwood Manufacturers Association.

When the operations of the Holt Lumber Company were brought to a close on Nov. 14, 1938, the company looked with pride upon its employment record. Just as the management of the company had remained relatively constant over a long period, so had its labor force. The following table suggests the slight turnover among a large portion of Holt's two hundred eighteen employees:

Number of Employees	Number of Years with the company
27 employees	5-9 years
25 employees	10-15 years
18 employees	16-20 years
15 employees	21-25 years
18 employees	26-30 years
15 employees	31-35 years
10 employees	36-39 years
7 employees	40-45 years
1 employee	47 years
3 employees	50-52 years
1 employee	57 years (W.A. Holt)

While this is at best a superficial indication of the relations between the Holts and their employees it nevertheless is symbolic of the stability which characterized the family's lumber activities from 1865 to 1938.

-- This history is based on three secondary accounts: George W. Hotchkiss, Industrial Chicago: The Lumber Interests, vol. 5, pp. 315-319 and pp. 455-456; History of Northern Wisconsin, p. 658; and The American Lumberman, No. 3141, Dec. 17, 1938, pp. 1, 51-58.