Marshall County, West Virginia - Biography of J. Howard Holt

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Submitted by Valerie Crook.

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II,
pg. 548-549
Marshall

J. HOWARD HOLT, who is engaged in the practice of law at
Moundsville, judicial center of Marshall County, has won suc-
cs°s and prestige as one of the representative members of the
bar of the northern part of West Virginia.

Mr Holt was born on Knawls Creek in Braxton County,
Virginia, (now West Virginia), on the 19th of September, 1858,
and is a son of Jonathan and Eve Ann (Mealy) Holt. He
attended the public schools of his native county and also
those of West Milford, Harrison County, and he early mani-
fested the studious habits and insatiable appetite for reading
that have proved potent in expanding his mental horizon to
wide limits, he being distinctily a man of liberal education
in a general way as well as in the profession of his choice,
his advancement representing in large measure the result of
his own efforts. He has proved an effective character-builder
and a man of worthy achievement, has maintained a sane
outlook upon life and has won success and honor in his exact-
ing profession, in which connection he has proved that
determination and zealous application can prove quite as
effective as mere collegiate education, which latter was not
his portion. He has been a man of thought and action, and
such an one is fortified for the overcoming of obstacles and
disadvantages that would baffle one of less courage and de-
termination. Mr. Holt read law in his home, and upon exam-
ination before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals at
Wheeling he was admitted to the bar November 8, 1884. He
has given nearly forty years to the work of his profession,
has long been known as a resourceful trial lawyer and safe
counsellor and has appeared in connection with many im-
portant litigations in the various courts of this section of the
state. During a large portion of the time since he established
in the practice of law Mr. Holt has given effective service as
commissioner of both Circuit and County Courts. He was
originally a democrat in political allegiance, but in 1886 he
aligned himself with the prohibition party, in which he gained
prominence as a leader in campaign activities and in the
general work of the party from the first he was foremost in
the campaign of the prohibition party in West Virginia, the
prohibition amendment in that year having been defeated
by 40.000, but a splendid victory for the cause came in 1912,
when a similar amendment was carried in the state by a vote
of more than 92,000. Mr. Holt is a most zealous member of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, and that he is fully fortified
in his religious faith needs no further evidence that a reference
to a poem of which he is the author, the same containing
seventeen cantos, of admirable literary and logical order,
and having attracted the favorable attention of many leaders
in the orthodox religious circles of the nation, this poem being
entitled: "A Layman's Answer to Agnosticism." Mr. Holt
has given much time and thought to prison reform, and his
work, his speeches and his writings in this connection give
evidence of the profundity of his humanitarian impulses and
his fine conception of the springs of human motive. His first
wife, whose maiden name was J. Ella West, died three years
after their marriage. For his second wife Mr. Holt wedded
Miss Annie P. Thatcher, and they became the parents of five
children: J. Howard, Jr., died at the age of twenty-five
years; Fay Marguerite is the wife of Hollis Edison Davenny,
of New York City; Forest Primrose is the wife of Ignatius
Brennan, of Moundsville; and Sara Fern and Charles William
remain at the parental home. One child Kenneth, by his
first wife, died young. Mrs. Davenny, Mrs. Brennan and
Miss Sara Fern are talented violinists and the whole family
have appeared in connection with nearly all Chautauqua
bureaus.  Mr. Duvenny was identified with community
service at Washington, D. C., where he was a member of the
reception committee in charge of affairs in the welcome
accorded to President and Mrs. Wilaon upon their return
from France, after the historic peace conference.

Close study and research have given Mr. Holt a broad and
high conception of crime and its punishment, and on this sub-
ject he wrote a most interesting and logical monograph, which
has been published in two editions, in pamphlet form, copies
of the article having been placed in the hands of every judge
and every legislator of West Virginia at the time when the
first edition was issued. So masterful and humane a sizing
up of criminology is represented in this brochure it could
well be wished that its circulation were extended throughout
the length and breadth of the land. That in a professional
way Mr. Holt consistently holds to the principles which he
maintains in this published article is indicated by the fact
that he had the probably unprecedented experience of appear-
ing in defense of a criminal, "Holly" Griffith, who received
three different sentences to life imprisonment for three
different murders, the case having been one of celebrity in the
criminal annals of West Virginia. His argument against
capital punishment is regarded as unanswerable.