Myron Holley (April 29, 1779 – March 4, 1841) was an American politician who played a major role in the creation of the Erie Canal.

He helped to establish the First Unitarian Church of Rochester by preaching sermons for it at a time when the young congregation could not support a paid minister.

Settlers in the western part of the state were becoming economically dependent on Canada, which was controlled by the British, finding it less expensive to ship their goods there by boat than to eastern New York by wagon.

The War of 1812, which had just ended, demonstrated that a lack of adequate transportation made it difficult to defend western New York against the British.

That type of cement was available at the time only in Europe, which meant that a substitute based on local minerals would need to be developed if the project was to succeed.

[18] In 1824, as construction of the canal neared an end, Holley submitted a treasurer's report that contained hundreds of pages of figures.

The state eventually restored his property after an investigation revealed no suspicious amount of money in his bank account and no unexplained change in his lifestyle.

[19] The largest public works project in the nation's history up to that point, the canal was immensely important to New York State and to the country.

[22] By dramatically reducing transportation costs between the eastern U.S. and the Great Lakes, the canal stimulated rapid growth in the latter region, contributing to the strength of northern forces during the American Civil War.

[23] In 1821, Holley and two other men bought a 300-acre farm in the eastern part of Lyons, New York, a village on the Erie Canal not far from his home in Canandaigua.

[24] The Freemasons, a secretive fraternal organization, grew in influence after the War of 1812 to such an extent that many people began to view it as a threat to the democratic process.

He accepted an offer in 1834 to move for a year to Hartford, Connecticut, leaving his family in Lyons, for a paid position as the creator and publisher of an anti-Masonic weekly called Free Elector.

Holley and many other abolitionists, however, were becoming increasingly convinced that moral suasion wasn't working and that political action was needed, creating a bitter split within the movement.

Others who played major roles in forming the party included Gerrit Smith, James G. Birney, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

In November, at a convention to discuss the issue that was led by Holley in Warsaw, New York, he introduced the same resolution, and this time it passed.

It was well-located for storing goods that needed to be transferred to and from canal barges, including flour that had been ground in mills at the nearby High Falls of the Genesee.

In 1839, in failing health from heart problems and two years before his death, he began publishing an abolitionist newspaper called the Rochester Freeman.

[40] Frederick Douglass, a prominent anti-slavery activist who had escaped from slavery, moved to Rochester in 1847 and began publishing an abolitionist newspaper called the North Star.

"[43] Holley disapproved of the strident evangelism of Charles Grandison Finney, whose influential sermons in Rochester and elsewhere in western New York resulted in that area being labeled the Burned-over District.

She and her life-long friend Caroline F. Putnam established the Holley School for African Americans in Virginia just after the Civil War.