At the time of his death, only Thomas A. Edison held more patents than Birdsill Holley, who was born at Auburn on 8 November 1820. The younger Holley, the son of mechanic and millwright Birdsill Holley (b. 1791) and Comfort Parker, spent his childhood in his native village and at Seneca Falls, where he became fascinated by the water power of the river and the falls (which are no longer extant). The early death of his father in 1828 required Birdsill to discontinue his formal education after the third year of schooling, in order to help support his family; by age ten, he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. He became skilled as a mechanic and millwright, and worked in those capacities at Seneca Falls and at Uniontown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. There he became superintendent and proprietor of a large shop, but to Seneca Falls in 1845 as a member of Silsby, Race & Holley, manufacturers of hydraulic machinery in Seneca Falls. During this period, he obtained his first patent for a water pump; the village would subsequently become known worldwide as the center of the manufacture of pumps.
Persuaded by Washington Hunt, a Governor of New York State, Holley relocated to Lockport in 1859. There he established Holley Manufacturing Company, which employed over 500 persons at a factory on the locks of the Erie Canal. The company produced a system of fire protection, including fire hydrants and eliptical rotary water pumps. Holley obtained the early patents for the fire hydrant. He initially offered the fire-protection system to the city fathers of his native Auburn, but his proposal was rejected. His adopted hometown of Lockport may now boast that their city is the birthplace of the fire hydrant. Chicago, too, initially rejected Holley's overtures-- but invested in the Holley system immediately after the disastrous fire of 1871. In 1877, the Holley Steam Heating Combination Company was formed; it was reorganized in 1881 as the American District Steam Heat Company. New York City and Auburn were among the first municipalities to adopt the new technology, and by the 1880s, steam heat systems were installed in cities throughout the nation.
Holley married Elizabeth Field in 1840. They had sons Norman, who died in infancy; Edgar, a mechanical engineer; Frank, an engineer and manager of Holley Manufacturing Company; and Clarence, an erecting engineer for the company. Birdsill left his wife in the 1870s; their divorce caused scandal. He married Sophia Haas, twenty-eight years his junior; she bore him five children: Mabel, Birdsill, Norman, Howard and Edith. Holley died on 27 April 1894.
Artifacts and historical information about Holley's inventions and the manufacture of pumps in that village may be found at the Seneca Falls Historical Society.
