Holden's eldest son, Lieutenant Edward Shuttleworth Holden, joined the 23rd Welch Fusiliers and served at the Crimean War. He is considered to be Aston on Trent first military victim when he died of wounds received in the assault on the Redan at the Siege of Sevastopol on 9 September 1855. A window in Aston's church is the memorial to Holden's eighteen-year-old son as well as a memorial to him in old Harrovian. Holden's second son, Charles Shuttleworth Holden b. 16 July 1838 d. 6 August 1872 was a Magistrate for the County of Derbyshire. He married Juliana Evans Hartopp, daughter of Edward Bourchier Hartopp M.P. (Little Dalby) in London in 1863 and had one son, Edward Charles Shuttleworth Holden b. 7 January 1865 who was a Justice of the Peace and a Major in the Derbyshire Yeomanry Holden's younger son, Francis Shuttleworth Holden, attended Rugby School in 1865.