Elora Hayward

Elora Hayward's signature, 1869 (SCSU Archives)

Elora H. Holden headstone, North Star Cemetery, St. Cloud, Minnesota (Find A Grave)

Josiah Hayward, 1880-1889 (Ancestry.com)

Mary Hayward, 1900-1910 (Ancestry.com)

Elora E. Hayward was born in Maine on February 2, 1852 to Josiah Eaton and Mary Stinson (Gray) Hayward and was the fourth of their eight children. Her father was an influential farmer and businessman. Josiah was born in Mechanics’ Falls, Maine on February 2, 1826. After he and Mary were married in 1848, he and his brother, Samuel, came to Minnesota in 1849, but returned back east. Josiah, Mary, and their children came to Minnesota to stay in 1856. Initially settling in what became Brockway township in Stearns County, Minnesota, Josiah and Mary began their fortune in the pine industry along the upper Mississippi. Josiah was elected chairman of Brockway's first board of supervisors.

The family moved to St. Cloud in 1860, where on April 13, 1863, Josiah purchased the Central House, rebuilding it in brick and renaming it the Grand Central Hotel. He also purchased the West Hotel, was director of the German American and Merchants’ National Banks, and built a farm and mill near the city. During the 1880s and 1890s, his two hotels were the only St. Cloud businesses to hire African Americans, including John Wesley Webster, the father of St. Cloud State's first documented African-American student, Ruby Cora Webster.

Elora entered the Third State Normal School with her sister, Clara, in September 1869. Clara dropped out, but Elora graduated with the school’s first class on June 30, 1871. In her culminating essay, “Music as an Educator,” she argued that the refinement of “civilized nations” was in part due to the refinement of their music. As of 1873, Elora had not yet found a teaching position. She continued to live at home until 1883, when she married Dr. Emmet Clark Holden, a dentist from Vermont. One year earlier, Emmet had settled in St. Cloud and bought out Dr. Edward K. Jaques’s practice. Their daughter, Genevieve H., was born on February 22, 1884.

Around 1891, the couple moved to St. Paul, where Emmet became one of the city's leading dentists. Genevieve passed away on November 4, 1897 at only 12 years old, and Elora and Emmet never had another child. After Emmet’s passing on August 3, 1907, Elora lived on income from investments they had accrued. Moving to Chicago around 1909 with a secretary and two servants from Minnesota, she lived in one of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods, where she supplemented her income by taking in a boarder.

After her mother’s passing on September 1, 1912, Elora moved back to St. Cloud, where she lived on Third Avenue South and hired a maid and a chauffeur, Paul Martin Truzinski, a World War I veteran whose first language was Polish. Although he was in his twenties and his mother was still alive, Elora adopted Paul in the early 1920s. He took Holden as his last name. Elora passed away on September 2, 1926 in Collegeville, Minnesota. She, Emmet, and Genevieve are buried in St. Cloud’s North Star Cemetery. Paul was one of only three beneficiaries of her estate. Going by Paul M. Holden, he used his inheritance to move to Minneapolis and purchase ownership of copper and iron mines in the state. He died at age 44 on April 24, 1938 after moving to Seattle, where he is buried in Calvary Cemetery.

Paul Martin Holden

Hayward plot marker, 2012