In ex parte Lockwood the court says - “this court HELD”. HELD is the operant word. It means that it was a Holding.
Please read the definition of ‘holding’ - http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Holding
From your link:
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Holding
“That part of the written opinion of a court in which the law is specifically applied to the facts of the instant controversy. It is relied upon when courts use the case as an established precedent in a subsequent case.
“A holding is distinguishable from dicta, which is language in the opinion relating some observation or example that may be illustrative, but which is not part of the court's judgment in the case.”
Applying this definition of holding as opposed to dicta:
In Minor, SCOTUS applied the law to the facts with their holding that under the supreme law of the Constitution using their own clarified explicit definition of NBC, Mrs. Minor was the NBC type of citizen born in the country having two citizen parents (which excluded foreigners) and applied that definition to the facts and circumstances of Mrs. Minor's birth.
Locking in precedence, in Ex. Parte Lockwood, SCOTUS declared that the NBC language of law which was applied to the facts in Minor were "held" by SCOTUS, i.e. were an NBC holding and NOT dicta.
MMaschin wrote: “In ex parte Lockwood the court says - ‘this court HELD’. HELD is the operant word. It means that it was a Holding.”
And since they were stating the holding they left out the dicta about “natural born”:
“In Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, this court held that the word ‘citizen’ is often used to convey the idea of membership in a nation, and, in that sense, women, if born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States, have always been considered citizens of the United States, as much so before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution as since; but that the right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, and that amendment did not add to these privileges and immunities. Hence, that a provision in a state constitution which confined the right of voting to male citizens of the United States was no violation of the federal constitution.” Ex parte Lockwood , 154 U.S. 116 (1894)