Thomas Michael Holt (July 15, 1831 – April 11, 1896) was an American industrialist who served as the 47th governor of North Carolina from 1891 to 1893. Formerly a North Carolina State Senator and Speaker of the House of the North Carolina General Assembly, Holt was instrumental in the founding of North Carolina State University, as well as in establishing several railroads within the state and the state's department of agriculture. Holt was also responsible for the technology behind the family's Holt Mills "Alamance Plaids", the first colored cotton goods produced in the South – a development that revolutionized the Southern textile industry.
Thomas M. Holt AF & AM Masonic Lodge, located in Graham, NC, is named in honor of the former governor.
Life and career
Holt was born in Alamance County, North Carolina, on July 15, 1831, the son of Emily Virginia (Farish) and Edwin Michael Holt. Holt was a descendant of Michael Holt or Holdt, one of the earliest settlers of the Germanna Colony in Virginia in the early 18th century. Holt studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for one year before briefly moving to work in a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, dry goods store.
In 1858, Thomas and his father acquired Benjamin Trollinger's bankrupt textile-manufacturing mill later known as the "Granite Mill" (located in Haw River, North Carolina). In 1861, Thomas acquired his father's interest in the mill and moved to Haw River to oversee the mill's operations. (Edwin Michael Holt had formerly manufactured the so-called Alamance Plaids, the first cotton goods produced in the South on power looms. Edwin M. Holt established his Alamance Cotton Mill in 1837, thus beginning the Southern textile industry.)
In 1868, Thomas's brother-in-law, Adolphus "Dolph" Moore, became business partners with Thomas and the operation was renamed Holt & Moore. In 1876, Moore was murdered, and the mills were consolidated as the Thomas M. Holt Manufacturing Company. (Other members of the Holt family were operating the Haw River Mills, Glencoe Mills, Carolina Mill, Lafayette Mill, the Pilot Mill of Raleigh, and others in their expanding family empire.)