Joseph Holden

Joseph Holden (1815-1900) was a prominent American Flat Earth lecturer in the late 19th Century. The son of a sawmill owner in Otisfield, Ohio, Holden was a former justice of the peace, trial justice, candidate for state senator and census enumerator before beginning to lecture at the age of 75. Much like Lady Blount, Holden used a non-confrontational approach in his lectures and was well-liked by both believers and non-believers who attended his lectures. Holden appealed to common-sense evidence to argue his position. One of his more famous experiments was to set a pail of water atop a pole overnight and check it in the morning. His assertion was that a revolving Earth would have moved the pail. As expected, the pail was in its original place the next morning.

From http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mecotisf/bicenhs.htm: ''Probably the best known citizen of Rayville is Joseph W. Holden (1815-1900), mill owner and later prominent member of the Flat Earth Society. Because Joe Holden willed a small sum in support of a Sunday School picnic, East Otisfield still celebrates a Joe Holden Day each summer, honoring &quot;the old astronomer&quot; who, as the inscription of his gravestone tells, &quot;discovered that the Earth is flat and stationary, and that the sun and moon do move.&quot;''