# Holley, Horace Hotchkiss

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: R. Jackson Armstrong-Ingram, Holley, Horace Hotchkiss, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Holley, Horace Hotchkiss
> 
> R. Jackson Armstrong-Ingram
> 
> 1995
> 
> Holley, Horace Hotchkiss (1887-1960). Author, Bahá'í administrator, Hand of
> the Cause.
> 
> Early Life
> 
> Horace Hotchkiss Holley was born on April 7, 1887, in Torrington,
> Connecticut, United States of America. His family was well-to-do and his
> forebears included congregationalist ministers and noted educators. He
> graduated from the well-known Lawrenceville School in New Jersey in 1906
> and went on to attend Williams College where he studied literature.
> 
> In 1909, he set out for Europe with the intention of spending the summer
> there and returning to complete his studies. However, he met a young
> artist, Bertha Herbert, on the boat. She loaned him Myron Phelps' book
> about 'Abdu'l-Bahá which introduced Holley to the Bahá'í Faith. Herbert and
> Holley were married in October 1909 and remained in Europe, first in Italy
> and later in France. While they lived in Italy, their first daughter,
> Hertha, was born.
> 
> In 1911, the Holley family went to Thonon-les-Bains, France, to meet
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá who was staying there. In 1912, they moved to Paris and again
> met 'Abdu'l-Bahá on his visits there. In Paris, Horace opened a modern art
> gallery and Bertha studied design. While living in Paris, Holley published
> his first books of verse and his first work on the Bahá'í Faith, Bahaism:
> The Modern Social Religion.
> 
> Holley's view of the Bahá'í Faith was very much in social terms in these
> early years. It was not really until later that he developed an
> appreciation of its specifically religious aspects. Although, even then, he
> tended to emphasize a continuity between the religious and social aspects,
> viewing the former as inspiring individuals to achieve the latter rather
> than seeing them as directly interconnected.
> 
> New York
> 
> After the outbreak of World War I, the Holleys were among those who fled
> Paris. They went first to London, and then to New York where they stayed
> initially with the Kinney family, staunch members of the New York Bahá'í
> community.
> 
> The Holleys established themselves in Greenwich Village, New York, and
> associated with the rather bohemian literary and artistic society there.
> Their second daughter, Marcia, was born in 1916. Horace continued to write,
> publishing more verse, plays, and discussion of the Bahá'í Faith. However,
> what private income they had did not go as far in New York as it had in
> Europe and any supplement provided by Horace's literary and Bertha's
> artistic endeavors was inconsequential. Horace entered the more
> commercially viable world of advertising copywriting, working first with
> the Iron Age Publishing Company from 1918 to 1920 and then as chief of the
> copy department at the Redfield Advertising Agency from 1921 to 1925.
> 
> The Holleys' difficulties were not only financial. Their marriage had been
> under strain for some time and the circles in which they moved in Greenwich
> Village did not contribute to its stability. Horace and Bertha divorced in
> 1919. That same year, Holley married Doris Pascal whom he had first met in
> Paris.
> 
> Although divorced, Horace and Bertha remained un-amicably entangled for many
> years over financial matters and because of the sad condition of their
> elder daughter. Bertha went through repeated and worsening periods of
> mental disturbance until her death in 1936 which were very costly for all
> the family both financially and emotionally.
> 
> From his arrival in New York, Holley was active in Bahá'í circles, as
> well as those of Greenwich Village, and by the early 1920s he was also
> well-known nationally in the Bahá'í community. He was also an active member
> of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in New York which had developed an
> association with the Bahá'í community, among others, under its rector Dr
> William Norman Guthrie in the years before World War I. Holley served as
> Junior Warden of the vestry from 1928 to 1933, writing the church's
> publicity materials, acting as part-time manager of its rental apartment
> buildings, and spearheading its fundraising efforts. Holley left the church
> in 1933, along with many Bahá'ís and others, as a consequence of a
> disagreement between the vestry and the rector over church finances.
> 
> In 1923, Holley was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the
> Bahá'ís of the United States for the first time. He would serve on this
> body until 1959. He was Secretary from 1924 to 1930 and from 1932 to 1959.
> It was during his first term that the position was made full-time and
> Holley gave up his now well established career in advertising.
> 
> As well as serving on the National Assembly and working with St Mark's
> Church, Holley also served as editor of World Unity Magazine and worked
> with the World Unity Foundation. He initiated and edited Bahá'í News. And
> he was involved with numerous editorial and writing activities related to
> Star of the West, The Bahá'í World, and editions of Bahá'í writings.
> 
> Wilmette
> 
> In the late 1930s, the NSA decided to move the Bahá'í national
> administrative headquarters from the East Coast to the vicinity of the
> Mashriqu'l-Adhkar in Wilmette, Illinois. Holley moved to Wilmette in 1939,
> and this, together with the travel restrictions later imposed by World War
> II, encouraged a centralizing of national committee activities there as
> well as the direct administrative functions of the National Assembly
> secretariat itself.
> 
> Holley's conscientiousness and availability did sometimes encourage a "let
> Horace do it" attitude that could result in more of the burden and
> responsibility for national Bahá'í affairs resting on one person's
> shoulders than was quite fair. This conscientiousness was greatly relied
> upon by Shoghi Effendi, both for dealing with matters within the United
> States and internationally. Shoghi Effendi was likely the only person
> concerned with Bahá'í affairs to be in a position to both appreciate the
> extent of Holley's labors and to legitimately ask for more as he, himself,
> was even more beset.
> 
> After the move to Wilmette, Holley continued his editorial work, despite
> the growth in his administrative role, and served on national committees.
> He was also active in the local Wilmette Bahá'í community hosting community
> feasts and firesides. He participated in the broader life of the town, as
> well, becoming a member of Rotary, helping found the Wilmette Historical
> Commission, and even serving as an air raid warden during the war.
> 
> In 1944, Holley suffered a heart attack and from that year had recurring
> bouts of ill health, both because of his heart and later because of a nerve
> condition that caused him to be in almost constant pain. He also had
> problems with his eyesight. Despite everything, he continued to serve well
> beyond the point where concern for his health could have decided him to
> retire. Indeed, he even broadened the scope of his activities to include an
> international dimension. The National Assembly did establish the post of
> Assistant Secretary to help him, electing Charlotte Linfoot to this
> position, and she took over much of the day to day work of the office.
> 
> Hand of the Cause
> 
> The effort launched in the mid-1930s to increase the extent of the Bahá'í
> Faith in the Americas started to bear fruit after World War II with the
> creation of new National Assemblies. Holley represented the United States
> National Spiritual Assembly at the election of the first National Assembly
> in Canada (previously under the jurisdiction of the United States body) in
> 1948. Along with Dorothy Baker, he represented the United States Assembly
> at the election in Panama of the first National Assembly for Central
> America, in 1951.
> 
> Later in 1951, Shoghi Effendi appointed Holley a Hand of the Cause.
> Subsequent to this he attended overseas events as Shoghi Effendi's
> representative as well as that of the United States National Assembly. Of
> the international conferences held as part of the Holy Year celebrations of
> 1953, Holley attended those in Kampala, Uganda, Stockholm, Finland, and New
> Delhi, India, as well as the one in Chicago.
> 
> It was also in 1953 that Holley and Shoghi Effendi met for the first time
> after three decades of collaboration by correspondence when Holley visited
> Haifa, Israel, in December. As Secretary of the most firmly established
> national Bahá'í administrative body, Holley had played a major role in
> aiding Shoghi Effendi's efforts to give practical expression to Bahá'í
> administrative principles, even if Shoghi Effendi had to curb Holley's
> tendency to want to establish procedural rules. Temperamentally, Holley
> felt most comfortable with firm boundaries and it was an effort for him to
> imagine an administrative structure that approached situations
> contextually and flexibly. To some, this made him appear rigid, even
> intolerant, when it was largely a concern for a level playing field. Those
> occasions never ceased to astound him when he thought he was acting
> impartially in the best interests of all, but his actions were viewed as
> dictatorial.
> 
> In 1957, Holley attended the convention in Lima, Peru, at which the
> election for the first National Assembly for the northern countries of
> South America was held, as Shoghi Effendi's personal representative.
> 
> After the death of Shoghi Effendi in November 1957, Holley played a
> prominent role in the conclaves of the Hands who were attempting to steer
> the Bahá'í Faith on a safe course. Subsequently, he was asked to become one
> of the Hands of the Cause resident in Israel.
> 
> He resigned from the United States National Spiritual Assembly in 1959 and
> he and Doris arrived in Haifa in December of that year. His illness had now
> progressed considerably and he was very weak. He died in July 1960 and was
> buried at the foot of Mount Carmel in Haifa.
> 
> Bibliography
> 
> The National Bahá'í Archives, Wilmette, Illinois, has Holley's own papers.
> Apart from these the principal original sources on his career are the
> Records of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United
> States. The records of most committees of the United States National
> Assembly include material on Holley as do almost all collections in the
> National Bahá'í Archives that cover the years of his active participation
> in the community.
> 
> Although there is no available biography of Holley, any biography, memoir,
> or history related to the American Bahá'í Community between 1910 and 1960
> is likely to have mention of him. A valuable personal tribute to Holley
> which gives a good sense of a rounded human being is the "In Memoriam"
> article on him by Ruhiyyih Khanum in The Bahá'í World: XIII (849-858).
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views17557 views since posted 1999; last edit 2022-02-05 04:05 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../armstrong-ingram_encyclopedia_horace_holley;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Shortlink: bahai-library.com/439
> Citation: ris/439
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> — *Holley, Horace Hotchkiss (Used by permission of the curator)*