How Did Holyoke Get Its Name?

It was named either for an early settler, Elizur Holyoke, or for the Reverend Edward Holyoke, president (1737–69) of Harvard University. It began to develop industrially after 1848, when the first of several dams was completed across the river.

What is Holyoke named after?

Signature. Elizur Holyoke ( c. 1618 — 1676) of Springfield, Massachusetts was an English colonist, surveyor, scribe, soldier, the namesake of the mountain, Mount Holyoke, and indirectly, of the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts.

What does the name Holyoke mean?

In ancient Anglo-Saxon England, the ancestors of the Holyoke surname lived beside a religious marker known as the holy oak or beside a tree known as the evergreen-oak.