The gentleman whose name appears above claims distinction as having been one of the first settlers at Wallace, Idaho, and as a member of the firm of Holohan & McKinlay, dealers in tobacco and cigars, he is recognized as one of the prominent business men of that city. He is a native of Hardin county, Kentucky, and is a son of Michael and Ann (Welsh) Holohan, natives of Ireland, who came early in life to the United States and met and married here, settling in Kentucky about 1850. Michael Holohan died in Idaho, in 1880, aged about fifty years, and his widow, now about sixty-two years old, is living at Wallace. They had eight children, of whom six are now living, and of whom Peter J. Holohan was the second in order of nativity.
At nine years of age Peter J. Holohan accompanied his parents and brothers and sisters from Kentucky to Iowa, where the family lived until 1878. He then went to Oregon, but remained only a short time before settling with his father’s family on Camas prairie, in Idaho (now in Idaho county), where he lived until 1885, five years after his father’s death, and then came to Wallace, where he was one of the first settlers.
Mr. Holohan’s first enterprise after taking up his residence at Wallace was in packing merchandise to the various mining camps round about, where it met with ready sale. Later he engaged in real-estate operations and thus acquired considerable property, notably an interest in the Holohan & McKinlay block at Wallace, occupied partially by the tobacco and cigar establishment of Holohan & McKinlay. He has mined with some success, too, and has conducted all of the enterprises with which he has had to do with §0 much energy and good judgment that he ranks as one of the leading businessmen of the city.
Personally Mr. Holohan is very popular, and he has a large acquaintance, which is constantly augmented by his membership of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and by his activity as a Democrat, for he is a Democrat of the kind that is bred in “Old Kentucky” and has been chairman of the Democratic county central committee of Shoshone county, and is influential in all important and local councils of his party. He was married in 1881 to Miss Mildred Sebastian, a native of Oregon, and they have two children named Denis and Guy.