In the fall of 1859, twenty-four year old Virginian, Smithson Alexander Selkirk Holley purchased a 161 acre tract of wooded land on the Coffield fork on the waters of Deer Creek, in Crittenden County. Within a few weeks he, his father William M. H. Holley, and his partner, a surgeon and veteran of the Florida Indian Wars. Washington D. Cosby, M.D., would put up a hickory pole cabin a few yards west of a shaft they were sinking on a vein of fluorite. The mineral of exploitation was not the high grade fluorite for which the "Holly Mine" would later be known, but the lead within the ore body. By June of 1860, Dr. Cosby had tired of the mining business and returned to his home and medical practice in Golconda, Illinois. The Holleys would continue to mine as the nation commenced Civil War.

War and the consequences thereof, were not things taken lightly by the Holley family. Smithson's great grandfather, John Holley, for whom he would name his firstborn son, had fought in the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. In 1755, John and 120 other troops, serving British General Edward Braddock, were ambushed by the French and Indians as they neared Fort Duquesne, Pennsylvania. More than nine hundred of their command including the general, were slaughtered in nightmarish defeat. A tall, young colonel by the name of George Washington lead those who fled that day, among whom were John Holley and Daniel Boone. John was captured in 1788 by the Shawee Indians, along with Daniel Boone and twenty-six other settlers, at the Blue Licks, outside of Boonesborough, Kentucky. Boone soon managed to escape, but more than five years passed before John was rescued from his "adoption" to return to his wife and six children. Smithson's grandfather, Jacob Holley, enlisted in the U. S. Army for the War of 1812. Jacob died in battle near Fort Shelby (Michigan), leaving his wife with two small boys, the younger of whom was to be Smithson's father, (documentation for this paragraph provided by Catherine Scott Schorn of Tulsa, OK, great-granddaughter of Smithson G. Holley, the uncle of Smithson A.S. Holley).

After the war, Smithson A.S. Holley's battles were far from over. Depositions by physicians and relatives are among his pension papers. They described him as living in Crittenden County, Kentucky and surrounded by "Southern sympathizers and Rebels". When in 1880 a name was needed for the local post office, the name chosen was a "Amplias," for Confederate General Adam Rankin Johnson's Adjutant, Frank Amplias Owen, giving some credence of the allegations. Smithson was not living there in 1888 to see this indignation rectified. The post office was then reestablished and renamed "Sheridan" after Philip Sheridan, the favorite Union General of the new Postmaster, Abraham Jeremiah "Uncle Dick" Bebout.

By 1884, Smithson A.S. Holley had endured more than twenty legal battles and lost not the war to his enemies, but his home, farm, and mine of twenty-five years. The last time he was seen in the county, he was serving out a two month jail sentence at hard labor upon the streets and alleys of Marion. His long hair had been "trimmed like that of a convict."

Today, living about Sheridan are those who are the descendants of the Holley's neighbors and of those involved in their trials. One of whom relates what he was told by his grandfather about Smithson Holley's final departure from the area. Smithson had been observed by his grandfather loading his wagon with sacks filled with silver coins, the same coins that he was well known to pass in the community and alleged to have processed from a deposit of lead, heavy with silver, that he had discovered in a cavern. The Holley silver dollars are consistently described as being both large and purer than U.S. mint dollars of the day and of have no face or serration about the rim. There are several people who report having actually seen some of the coins, but the last local person known to have had one in possession relates that it was stolen along with other items of value in the 1970's when her house was burglarized. Was said that a smelter stood next to the cabin, the cinders from which were left in the field.

The cavern is a place about which curiosities have never been satisfied, with the exception, perhaps of the Holleys. Smithson in 1867 had completed a hewed log cabin about the cavern, overlooking a vertical shaft used as its entrances. Local people claim that when the cavern was still open, it was found to be infested with snakes. There were bulkheads to be seen across entrances and wooden doors left ajar there no one knew what lay behind. Allegedly the cavern had vents to the surface in front of the cabin and openings of distant hollows. It was observed that for days after torrential downpours, water would silently rise within the cavern walls, only to recede again in as many days. The rain brought sediments and surfaced debris that gradually sealed the cavern along with its secrets.

In Southern Illinois, the Holley legend continues and partly substantiated by a lengthy newspaper account entitled "Looks like Murder most Foul". The article graphically related the circumstances of Smithson Holley's arrival in the community and subsequent death. It seems that he made his appearance in their town alone and "…displayed a considerably sum of silver and gold, in small sacks on his person." He then purchased a leasehold on a rough piece of hilly terrain with a cabin on it. A few weeks later his "charred and almost consumed remains…were found in a burning log heap, about two hundred yards from his cabin." Son John whom discovered and reported his death was immediately places under arrest. He was described as being "…of medium and muscular build with an intelligent and rather handsome appearance." John was released following a coroner's request that rendered the verdict: "the deceased came to his death from unknown causes or at the hands of an unknown party or parties.

Two very different versions of what had transpired exist. The first asserts that the son, as he lay dying two years later, confessed to having murdered his father. The second version conversely claims that the son was not involved at all, but that two local men had committed the dastardly deed. It is alleged that subsequent to the murder, they were observed as to having a large sum of silver and gold and that in an inebriated state had alluded to the murder.

Ironically, the circumstances concerning Smithson's death enabled an old enemy's son to sell the Holley Mine property at a substantial profit to a prominent businessman and bank president from the community in which he was murdered. Coincidentally, the enemy's son was by then a practicing physician and living within ten miles of the murder site. A few months later, the doctor left the state.

Today, the mysteries of the Holley cavern are being explored by a team of volunteers excavators comprised of the descendents of the Holleys, the Deer Creek community, the Victor Hurst and the Ben Clement Families---Submitted by B.E. Clement, Jr.