Dwight Gerard Holbrook Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1751-1752 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	DWIGHT GERARD HOLBROOK, of Sioux Falls, who is manager for South 
Dakota for the Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, is a native 
of Windsor Locks, Hartford county, Connecticut, where he was born on the 
27th of July, 1867, being a son of Dwight and Kalista (Thayer) Holbrook, 
both scions of prominent families of New England, where the father was 
an inventor and a manufacturer of scientific and school apparatus, his 
birth having occurred in Derby, Connecticut. He died in 1891, and his 
wife resides in New York state. The subject of this sketch is of the 
seventh generation in direct line of descent from John Holbrook, who 
immigrated from Derby, England, and settled at Oyster Bay, Long Island, 
in the early part of the seventeenth century. His son Abel was the first 
white child born at Oyster Bay, the date of his nativity having been 
1653. Several of the descendants of the original American ancestors were 
valiant soldiers in the Continental line during the war of the 
Revolution. On the maternal side the subject is descended from Richard 
Thayer, who settled in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1640; Henry Adams, 
who was born in 1626; John Alden and his wife, Priscilla; William White, 
of the "Mayflower"; and in the fourth generation from Rev. Joseph 
Thaxter, who was commissioned by the "council of the Colony of the 
Massachusetts Bay," on the 23d of January, 1776, as "chaplain of the 
regiment whereof John Robertson, Esq., is colonel," and who carried a 
musket at the battles of Concord Bridge, Lexington and Bunker Hill. In 
1825 Rev. Joseph Thaxter conducted the religious service at the laying 
of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill monument. His commission as chaplain 
is now in the possession of his great-granddaughter, the mother of him 
whose name initiates this resume. As to the genealogy of the Holbrook 
family specific reference is made in the following named historical 
publications: American Ancestry, volume I, page 38, and volume VII, page 
6; Austin's Ancestral Dictionary, page 27, also allied families, pages 
131-3; Dodd's History of East Haven, Connecticut, page 129; Orcutt's 
History of Derby, pages 729-31; and Vinton's Genealogy, pages 185-8 and 
330-40. Of the Thayer and Thaxter families mention is made in detail in 
Massachusetts Historical Society, volume XVII, page 280; in the Records 
of the Town of Braintree, 1640-73; and in East Anglia, volume III, page 
35; while of the Adams, Alden and White families, record appears in 
Savage's Genealogical Dictionary.

	Dwight G. Holbrook received his early educational discipline 
principally in private schools in his native state, where he was 
prepared for college. He, however, decided to enter business life, in 
1884, rather than to continue a burden upon a mother whose courage, 
business sagacity, self-abnegation and unqualified devotion had hitherto 
given him ample opportunities. After nine months of clerical service in 
the passenger department of the New York Central Railroad, he resigned, 
in October, 1884, to become a clerk in the actuary's department of the 
Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, winning advancement through 
his fidelity, discrimination and marked executive ability, and being 
made private secretary to the vice-president of the company in 1889, 
while in 1893 he was given his present important preferment as general 
agent for the Dakotas, in which capacity he has accomplished a great 
work in the interests of a great company, manoeuvreing his forces with 
consummate skill and distinctive initiative and administrative force, 
and thus bringing much prestige to this old, reliable and well-known in-
surance corporation. He is a Republican in his political proclivities, 
but has never desired office. Fraternally he is identified with the 
Knights of Pythias, and the Masonic order, in which latter he is 
affiliated with Minnehaha Lodge, No. 1, Free and Accepted Masons; Sioux 
Falls Chapter, No. 2, Royal Arch Masons; Cyrene Commandery, No. 2, 
Knights Templar; and Oriental Consistory, No. 1, Ancient Accepted 
Scottish Rite.

	In the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the 14th of July, 1898, Mr. 
Holbrook was united in marriage to Miss Charlotte B. Long, daughter of 
Joseph D. Long, and of this union have been born two children, namely: 
Robert Dwight, June 7, 1899, and Darwin Long, July 5, 1903.