Cyrus Kurtz Holliday was born on April 3, 1826 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of David and Mary Kennedy Holliday, was born near Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His progenitors, of Scotch-Irish descent, were prominent in the founding of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.
Holliday graduated from Allegheny College in 1852.
In 1852 Holliday planned to enter the legal profession, but he soon forsook the law to engage in business enterprises. He was successful in his early ventures in Pennsylvania, but farther West, he thought, his capital and talents could be used to greater advantage, and in 1854 he moved to Kansas. He settled first at Lawrence, allying himself with the Free-state men. Convinced that Kansas would become a free state, and that the time was ripe for founding the future capital, he organized a party at Lawrence and led it up the Kansas River to select a suitable site for such a city.
In November 1854, the party selected the location, staked out the townsite, and organized the Topeka Town Company, with Holliday as president. Five years later, in 1859, Holliday appeared before the Wyandotte constitutional convention and succeeded in having his city declared the territorial capital. He established a home in Topeka and built up various business undertakings, and during the slavery troubles in Kansas he worked consistently for the Free-state cause.
He had long dreamed of the possibility of building a railroad along the old Santa Fé Trail, but railroad schemes were legion during the fifties and he found it difficult to interest people in his project. His energy and enthusiasm, however, finally won him a following and his persistence achieved results. While a member of the Kansas territorial council in 1859 he drafted the bill chartering the Atchison & Topeka Railroad Company (later the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad) and secured its enactment. When the company was formed pursuant to the charter, Holliday was made president. Later he drafted the bill which passed Congress in 1863, providing a land grant for his road, and the following year the Kansas legislature authorized the counties through which the road would pass to issue bonds and subscribe stock in the railroad company.
Finally the bonds were voted and sold, and in November 1868 the ground was broken for the first construction. Holliday remained a director of the railroad until the time of his death. In addition to his other activities he was one of the organizers of the Republican party in Kansas; he served in the territorial and state legislature; and he was an adjutant-general during the Civil War. He became president of the Merchants' National Bank and of the Excelsior Coke and Gas Company of Topeka and was for many years the largest tax-payer in the city.
Holliday is best remembered as a prominent railroad executive and a founder of the township of Topeka. He was granted an honorary title of Colonel. He was the first president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, as well as one of the railroad's directors for nearly 40 years. A number of railway locomotives have been named after him.
Holliday was a member of the Republican Party.
On June 11, 1854, Holliday married Mary Dillon Jones of Meadville, Pennsylvania; they had two children.
