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- His father wanted him to marry against his will, so he left Scotland for America and settled in Augusta, Georgia where he purchased one acre of land fronting on Reynolds, Houston and Bay Streets from Thomas and Ann Cummings.
He was the inventor of a machine "for taking the burrs out of wool". His granddaughter's husband, James Reid Aiken wrote "in 1775 Hogden Holmes was the original inventor and his machine was locked up in Hamburg, S.C., when Whitney (Eli) through the help of a negro, secured a diagram of it. On this infringement Whitney got a patent for "a machine for ginning cotton.' This created a lawsuit in Georgia. Holmes spent some $8000 and died insolvent. The suit went to the United States Courts, and Whitney sold his claim to the State of South Carolina for $20,000. After Holmes' death the case was abandoned, as his heirs did not desire to contend against the State. Holmes got his patent in 1796, and Col. William McCreigh of Winnsboro bought the rights for 20 years and made and sold all the cotton gins in the South up to 1810." Holmes patent, which was signed by President George Washington, was dated May 12, 1796. It was presented in 1882 to the South Carolina Historical Society by William D. Aiken, a great-grandson of Hogden Holmes. A full record of the invention and lawsuit is in a book at the South Carolina Library.
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- 1804
