Felix Holt, The Man Who Told The Purchase Story
Felix Holt, author
It was indeed Felix Holt who wrote and told our story. He was born in Murray, Calloway County, Kentucky in 1898. From his father he learned to appreciate great literature, but was destined to complete his formal education with high school. It was perhaps experience rather than education which proved to be the most valuable asset to Felix Holt.
He was a cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper in Paris, during WW I. This led him to serve as a cartoonist and later as a reporter for the newspapers in Chicago following the War. He moved to Detroit and wrote for the Detroit News and Detroit Times in the 1920s. He began his career in radio in the 1930s and became chief writer for the Lone Ranger serial which had originated from Detroit.
He drew on the family reminiscences and legends handed down from his pioneer ancestors in Kentucky to produce his first novel, The Gabriel Horn in 1951. The Gabriel Horn is the story of “the last immense wilderness of western Kentucky – the Jackson Purchase country”. The Gabriel Horn made it to the movies as “The Kentuckian” in 1955 starring Burt Lancaster. Holt’s second book, Daniel Boone Kissed Me, came out in 1954, shortly before his death. Holt died in Bucks County Pennsylvania June 2, 1954 at the age of 56.
(This posting adapted from the article by Danny R. Hatcher which appeared in the Jackson Purchase Sesquicentennial Publication, 1969, of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society. The above picture accompanied the article and carried this caption: Photograph taken during the 1920s. Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Louise Holt Dick of Murray, KY.)