HOLLIDAY, Ben, expressman, born in Bourbon county, Kentucky, in 1819; died in Portland, Oregon, 8 July, 1887. He became a pioneer in western Missouri, and afterward in Kansas, was an army contractor during the Mexican war, and in 1849-52 established mercantile houses in Salt Lake City and San Francisco. A few years later he founded Holliday's mail and overland express, which for ten years was the connecting link between the western frontier states and the Pacific. He also established the fast pony-express, and a line of twenty-three steamers from Alaska to Mexico. He afterward invested in mining property, and with the proceeds of the Ophir mine in Nevada bought a tract of land in Westchester county, New York, which he called Ophir farm. Here he built a house that cost $1,000,000, where he entertained his friends in magnificent fashion, but the property was for many years in litigation, and it finally passed entirely out of his hands.