The First There's a first for everything. First man on the moon, the first person to milk a cow, the first person to fly a plane, the first person to win Survivor. And, of course, the first dude to murder a bunch of people. That dude happened to be New Hampshire-born, Herman Webster Mudgett who later changed his name to H. H. Holmes. New Hampshire Life Holmes was born in Gilmanton in 1861 and started out a mostly normal New Hampshire life. Well, besides the eerie foreshadowing of future endeavors when, as a child, Holmes harmed animals and chalked it up to his interest in pursuing medicine and practicing on the creatures according to Biography.com