David Holt was the youngest child of George and Elizabeth Holt who lived in Rufford, Nottinghamshire. He was ordained as Anglican clergymen and I am indebted to The Clergy Database website for information about his career, even down to his annual income!
Both David and his elder brother George became clergymen and both got their degrees at Queen’s College, Cambridge. David was ordained on 20 September 1772 and became a curate at Gotham, a village near Nottingham, with a salary of £30 a year. This would be about £53,000 in modern values as calculated by the Measuring Worth website.
After his marriage at Clowne in Derbyshire, he may have felt the need for his wife to be near her family home. At all events, he became a stipendiary curate at Whitwell nearby and the increase of £10 a year to his salary must have been welcome as his family grew.
The Rev. David and Mary Holt lived at Whitwell for the rest of their lives, but David’s responsibilities seem to have been wider than his home parish.
In 1778 he became Vicar of Elmton with Cresswell nearby and kept that living almost until his death. Just six years earlier Mary Eyre had been buried in the Elmton churchyard. She was the great-grandmother of William Johnson, the boy who would become David’s son-in-law. It really was a small world!
For ten years between 1783 and 1793 David was also Vicar of Egmanton and Rector of Tollerton. Perhaps best not to enquire: patronage in the Church of England was a controversial subject for many years and I would recommend Trollope’s clerical novels for further illumination!
Father of Elizabeth Holt, son of George and Elizabeth Holt
Baptised David Holt on 16 February 1750 at Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire
Married Mary Jones on 4 July 1774
Buried 14 May 1813