David Holmes (politician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
See David Holmes for other persons with this name.

David Holmes (March 10, 1769August 20, 1832) was the last governor of the Mississippi Territory and the first governor of the State of Mississippi.

Born in York County, Pennsylvania, Holmes and his family moved to Virginia when he was a child. He served as U.S. Representative from Virginia from 1797 until 1808 when President Jefferson appointed him Mississippi's fourth territorial governor. Holmes was very popular and his appointment marked the end of a long period of factionalism within the territory.

In 1817, Mississippi joined the Union as the 20th state and Holmes won the election to be the first governor of the State of Mississippi. Holmes took the oath of office in October 1817, though Mississippi did not officially become a state until December of that year. During his term, he established the state judicial system and the state militia and organized the land east of the Pearl River that the Choctaw Indians ceded. He served a complete term of two years, but Governor Holmes decided not to run for re-election in 1819.

In 1820, the state legislature elected Holmes to be one of Mississippi's Senators in the U.S. Congress, and he served from 1821 until late 1825, when his election to another term as governor of Mississippi forced him to resign. Because Holmes's declining health forced him to resign, he served only six months (January 1826 - July 1826) as Mississippi's sixth governor.

Holmes returned to his native Virginia where his health continued to fail before his death in 1832 at Jordan's Sulphur Springs, near Winchester, Virginia, where he still lies in the Mt. Hebron Cemetery.

Holmes County, Mississippi is named in honor of him.

Preceded by
Robert Williams
Governor of Mississippi Territory
1809–1817
Succeeded by
Office becomes Governor of Mississippi
Preceded by
Formerly Governor of Mississippi Territory
Governor of Mississippi
1817–1820
Succeeded by
George Poindexter
Preceded by
Walter Leake
United States Senator (Class 1) from Mississippi
1820–1825
Served alongside: Thomas H. Williams
Succeeded by
Powhatan Ellis
Preceded by
Gerard Brandon
Governor of Mississippi
1826
Succeeded by
Gerard Brandon
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.