Entries - Race and Ethnicity: White - Starting with H

Hess, Joan Edmiston

aka: Joan Hadley

A prolific writer from northwestern Arkansas, Joan Edmiston Hess was the author of dozens of mystery novels for adults and young adults. Known for her humor and use of regional flair, she wrote novels that feature a recognizable southern landscape of characters. The books are often narrated by wry, no-nonsense characters who are worldly in their knowledge and experience but also down to earth. Joan Edmiston was born on January 6, 1949, in Fayetteville (Washington County) to Jack D. Edmiston, a wholesale grocer, and Helen Edmiston, a building contractor. She attended high school in Fayetteville. She received a BA in art from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville in 1971 and an MA in education from Long Island University …

Hickey, Doyle Overton

Doyle Overton Hickey served as an officer in the U.S. Army during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, before retiring as a lieutenant general. Doyle Hickey was born in Rector (Clay County) on July 27, 1892, the oldest child of John and Genie Hickey; he had two brothers and two sisters. John Hickey was a carpenter, and the family moved to Camden (Ouachita County) before 1900. Doyle Hickey graduated from Camden High School in 1909 and entered Hendrix College, graduating in 1913. Hickey studied law and worked at a lumber company in Memphis, Tennessee, before entering the U.S. Army in 1917. Trained at the First Officers Training Camp, Camp Stanley, Texas, Hickey received a commission as …

Hickman [Steamboat]

The Hickman was a steamboat that caught fire and sank on the Arkansas River on March 5, 1860; two passengers were burned to death. The Hickman was a 228-ton sidewheel paddleboat built in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1855. Owned by the Bugher brothers of Cincinnati, the packet made regular runs between that city and Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Hickman left the wharf at Little Rock on the afternoon of March 2, 1860, bound for Cincinnati. When the vessel was around sixteen miles downriver from the capital, a fire broke out in some pine wood stored on a lower deck. “So rapid was the spread of the flames that within three minutes of the discovery of the fire, the flames had …

Hickman, Darrell David

Darrell David Hickman spent almost twenty-two years as a trial-court judge and justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Hickman, who grew up in Searcy (White County), was first elected chancery judge in a district that stretched to Little Rock (Pulaski County) and was elected twice to the Arkansas Supreme Court before retiring in 1990 to follow the seasons and travel from the Canadian Rockies to Mexico and back. He soon returned to Searcy and the town of Pangburn (White County), where he served two more stints as a chancery or circuit judge. Hickman had a propensity for issuing convulsive orders, such as when he declared the Constitutional Convention of 1975 unconstitutional, and for writing colorful opinions, such as when he …

Hicks, Bill

Bill Hicks was an American stand-up comedian and social critic in the tradition of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor. While he achieved only limited commercial success in his short lifetime, most of it in Great Britain, he is now regarded as one of the most influential American comedians of the twentieth century. With intellectual influences as wide-ranging as psychiatrist Carl Jung and linguist/political critic Noam Chomsky, Hicks married the middle-brow philosophical meandering of Woody Allen with the lacerating moral clarity of an Old Testament prophet. As a motion in the British House of Commons made on the tenth anniversary of his death declared, Hicks “may be mentioned as being worth[y] of inclusion with Lenny Bruce in any list of unflinching …

Hicks, Dan

Daniel Ivan Hicks was a cross-genre singer/songwriter specializing in a type of music he referred to as “folk jazz.” He served as front man for his band, the Hot Licks, off and on since 1968. Dan Hicks was born on December 9, 1941, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the only child of Ivan L. Hicks—a career military man—and Evelyn Kehl Hicks. The family moved to northern California when Hicks was five years old. The family settled in Santa Rosa, and Hicks resided in the area north of San Francisco for the rest of his life. Hicks started playing drums in grade school and played snare drum in his high school marching band. At age fourteen, he was accompanying high school …

High, Fred

aka: Fredrick Green High

Fredrick (Fred) Green High, who lived in Carroll County from birth to death, was one of Ozark folk culture’s most notable characters. His contributions to Ozark heritage are evident in the many recordings of his folk song performances. The John Quincy Wolf Folksong Collection at Lyon College consists of a dozen recordings of High, and Missouri State University’s Max Hunter Collection contains thirty-one additional High recordings. A 1953 Arkansas Gazette feature captured his near legendary status in the Ozarks: “Everybody in north Arkansas knows Fred High for he seldom misses a fair, festival, picnic, public sale, apple peeling, corn husking, or other public gathering.” Fred High was born on January 15, 1878, to Jacob and Sarah Ann (Roberts) High in …

Hilderbrand, Joe

As a fugitive from Arkansas justice in the 1960s, Joe Hilderbrand gained notoriety and even a measure of national acclaim by evading a horde of lawmen with airplanes and bloodhounds who chased him and a girlfriend through the wilds of the Ozark Mountains after he failed to return to Cummins Prison Farm from a furlough to visit his ailing father. It was one of the largest manhunts in Arkansas history. Legends accrued around the mountaineer—that he was innocent of any serious crime and a scapegoat for incompetent and embarrassed law enforcement agencies. Life magazine did a piece on Hilderbrand and the young woman, Frances Standridge, who helped him evade the posses. At least four ballads were written about Hilderbrand and …

Hill, Daniel Harvey

Daniel Harvey Hill was a Confederate general, professor, and president of what is now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), then called Arkansas Industrial University. Born on July 12, 1821 in York District, South Carolina, to Solomon Hill and Nancy Cabeen Hill, Daniel Harvey Hill was the youngest of eleven children. His father died four years later, and his mother raised the children with the help of her eldest son, William. The family owned a small plantation, and Hill grew up working the land. Entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1838, Hill graduated four years later, ranking twenty-eighth in a class of fifty-six. Originally assigned to the Engineer Corps, Hill instead served in the …

Hill, David Allen

Originally from Hot Springs (Garland County), author David Hill has written magazine articles that have won acclaim, being featured in Esquire, GQ, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and in various other print and digital publications. His first book, The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice, brought him international praise and was named as a Notable Book for 2020 by the New York Times. David Allen Hill was born on July 13, 1977, in Hot Springs to James Hill, who was a construction worker, and Pamelia Hill, who managed the Sawmill Depot restaurant and later owned Uncle Reuben’s Restaurant in Hot Springs. David Hill …

Hill, Jack Edward

Jack Hill was a broadcast journalist and documentary filmmaker who won national awards with station KAIT in Jonesboro (Craighead County) and eventually founded his own company in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to produce some sixty long-form features. Jack Hill was born in Rogers (Benton County), the only child of William Radus Hill and Grace Fields Hill. He attended Rogers High School, graduating in 1958 as senior class president. As a junior, in 1957, he played forward for the school’s only state champion basketball team. At the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), he majored in speech, participated in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, and served as chaplain of his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter. After obtaining …

Hill, James French

French Hill is a U.S. congressman from Arkansas’s Second District who was first elected in 2014. He is associated with the wave of new conservatives who made up the Tea Party Movement that helped the Republicans regain the majority in the House of Representatives in 2010. Prior to running for office, he held a number of staff and appointive governmental positions and also had a successful business career. Since taking his seat in 2015, Hill has established himself as a reliable conservative vote, strongly supportive of pro-business measures and a loyal supporter of former president Donald Trump. James French Hill was born on December 5, 1956, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The only child of Jay French Hill and Patricia …

Hill, Joseph Morrison

Joseph Morrison Hill was elected chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1904, the first person to defeat a sitting justice after Arkansas began electing Supreme Court justices in 1864. Although he served less than five years before resigning, Hill enjoyed a long and eminent career as an attorney, winning major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He also was a founder of the state tuberculosis sanatorium at Booneville (Logan County), which became the largest treatment facility for tuberculosis in the nation, and was president of its board of trustees most of his life. He died there in 1950. Joseph Hill was born on September 2, 1864, at Davidson College in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, the son of Daniel …

Hill, Julia Lorraine “Butterfly”

Julia Lorraine “Butterfly” Hill is an environmentalist, poet, writer, educator, speaker, and founder of the organization Circle of Life. She earned international fame as an environmental activist by protecting an old-growth forest in northern California from clear-cutting by a logging company. To prevent the logging, she lived in one of the trees—a 1,000-year-old redwood known as “Luna”—for 738 days until an agreement was reached with the Pacific Lumber Company. Julia Butterfly Hill was born on February 18, 1974, in Mount Vernon, Missouri, to Dale Edward Hill, a traveling minister, and Kathleen Anne DelGallo; she has two brothers. Her parents later divorced. Until she was ten, Hill lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where her parents had started a church called Freedom Chapel. …

Hill, Samuel Billingsley

Samuel Billingsley Hill was an Arkansas-born politician who represented the state of Washington in Congress for over a decade. An expert on taxation and an influential member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Hill left the House in 1936 to accept a presidential appointment to the United States Board of Tax Appeals (now the Tax Court of the United States), where he served for approximately seventeen years. Samuel B. Hill was born on April 2, 1875, in Franklin (Izard County). One of eight children born to Margaret Billingsley Hill and William Hill, he received his early education in the area’s common schools before attending the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He graduated from the university’s law …

Hindman, Thomas Carmichael

Thomas Carmichael Hindman was a prominent attorney and Democratic politician prior to the Civil War. In the crisis prior to that war, he was a major player in bringing about the state’s secession. He subsequently served in the Confederate army as a brigadier general, playing a prominent role in the defense of Arkansas and later serving in the Army of Tennessee. Thomas Hindman was born on January 28, 1828, at Knoxville, Tennessee, one of Thomas Hindman and Sallie Holt Hindman’s six children. His father was a planter and a federal agent for Indian affairs in Tennessee. In 1841, his father purchased a new plantation in Ripley, Mississippi, and the family moved there. Hindman went to local schools, and then, like …

Hinds, James

James M. Hinds was an Arkansas politician during the Reconstruction era. He served as a representative to the Arkansas Constitutional Convention of 1868 and to the U.S. Congress upon Arkansas’s readmission to the Union after the Civil War. During his four months as representative, Hinds helped introduce a bill for the sale of what is now Hot Springs National Park, aided in establishing agricultural colleges, and promoted the interests of black soldiers. Upon the passage of the Reconstruction Acts, Hinds advocated the measures on a state level, as well as taught enfranchised African-American men about their newly acquired rights as citizens. His assassination by a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member was deemed politically motivated. He is one of the six …

Hinegardner, Verna Lee Linxwiler

Verna Lee Linxwiler Hinegardner was appointed the poet laureate of Arkansas in 1991 by Governor Bill Clinton and held the post until 2003. In addition to writing and publishing her own poetry, she was active in many literary societies and activities that promote a greater appreciation of poetry. Verna Lee Linxwiler was born on January 2, 1919, in Morrisonville, Illinois, to Fred and Retta (Hendricks) Linxwiler. Her father was a farmer. She graduated from Lichfield Community High School in 1936 and attended Lincoln Junior College in Lincoln, Illinois. She married Marshall Andrew Hinegardner on December 12, 1937. The couple had three daughters. After World War II, the Hinegardners lived in Meridian and Vicksburg, Mississippi, before moving to Hot Springs (Garland County) …

Hinton, Thomas Melvin

Thomas Melvin Hinton was a classically trained artist who produced many realistic and impressionistic oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings. His paintings won many awards in Arkansas and nationally and are on permanent exhibit at museums and other public and private venues. Thomas Hinton was born on October 4, 1906, to a prominent Texarkana (Miller County) couple, Thomas Jonathan Hinton, who was a plantation owner and businessman, and Mina Kinser Hinton. He had two sisters. As a toddler, he was stricken with polio and became crippled in one leg, though his father made sure that his son learned to ride horses and manage the plantation. Commuting from the city to the farm on Red River became increasingly difficult, so Hinton’s mother’s …

Hocker, Willie Kavanaugh

Willie Kavanaugh Hocker of Wabbaseka and Pine Bluff, both in Jefferson County, was a schoolteacher, poet, and active member of civic groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Colonial Dames Society. She was also the designer of the Arkansas state flag, one of only two women in the United States who have had state flag designs adopted. Willie Hocker was born on July 21, 1862, in Madison County, Kentucky. She was the youngest child of William K. and Virginia Brown Hocker, who moved their family to Arkansas in 1870, settling in Dudley Lake Township near Wabbaseka. Her father was a farmer/planter who, according to the Goodspeed history, had served with …

Hodges, Asa

Asa Hodges was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives. He represented the First District of Arkansas in the Forty-Third Congress, serving from 1873 to 1875. Asa Hodges was born on January 22, 1822, near Moulton, Alabama, to William Hodges and Jeanette Daugherty Hodges. He and his family later moved to Marion (Crittenden County). After receiving his early education in local schools, he graduated from LaGrange College in LaGrange, Missouri, in 1848. Hodges also studied law and was admitted to the Alabama state bar in 1848. He then began to practice law, working first in the offices of L. P. Walker in Florence, Alabama, and later forming a legal partnership with Thomas M. Peters, who would later …

Hodges, Earle William

At the time of his election in 1910, Earl W. Hodges was the youngest secretary of state in the history of Arkansas. A longtime newspaperman and public servant, he went on to be elected twice more. It was the only elected office he held. Earl William Hodges was born in a log cabin at Newark (Independence County) on September 27, 1881, to Jesse Beane Hodges and Teresa J. Humphrey Hodges. When he was about two years old, the family moved to Fulton County in northern Arkansas. He was educated in Salem (Fulton County) schools. While there, he learned the trade of newspaper typesetting and soon became the foreman of the Monitor of Mammoth Spring (Fulton County). He eventually purchased a …

Hodges, Kaneaster, Jr.

Kaneaster Hodges Jr. served as a Democratic interim U.S. senator representing Arkansas from December 10, 1977, to January 3, 1979. He was appointed to the post by Governor David Pryor after the death of the incumbent senator, John L. McClellan. Hodges also served as city attorney and deputy prosecuting attorney of Newport (Jackson County) and held a number of positions in state government. Kaneaster Hodges Jr. was born to Harryette Hodges and Kaneaster Hodges Sr. in Newport on August 20, 1938; he was one of six children. His father, whose career path Hodges would follow, was a lawyer. Hodges graduated from Newport High School in 1956 and went on to receive his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1960 and …

Hodges, Thomas L.

Thomas Luther Hodges was a noted physician and amateur archaeologist in Hot Spring County in the early twentieth century. Focusing on materials related to the late prehistoric Caddo, the collection accumulated by Hodges and his wife, Charlotte, is now held by the Joint Educational Consortium in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Thomas L. Hodges was born in Morehead, Kentucky, on January 17, 1868. It is unclear what happened to Hodges’s birth parents, but he became the adopted son of William and Sarah Hodges and moved with his adoptive family to Knox County, Missouri, in the early 1870s. His father died in 1874, and Sarah Hodges remarried the following year to widower George Sloan. In the 1880 federal census, Hodges appears with his …

Hoelzeman, George Raymond

George Raymond Hoelzeman is a liturgical artist who has gained national acclaim for his creation of church furniture, statues, and relief woodcarvings, particularly those depicting the Stations of the Cross (also known as the Way for the Cross) for Catholic churches throughout the United States. George Hoelzeman was born on April 24, 1963, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the eldest of four sons born to Aloys Joseph (A. J.) Hoelzeman, who was a carpenter, and Therese Huber Hoelzeman, a nurse and music teacher. He grew up in Morrilton (Conway County) and received his primary and secondary education at Sacred Heart School there. After graduating from high school, Hoelzeman entered St. Joseph Seminary in Covington, Louisiana, graduating in 1985 with a …

Hogan, Dan

Dan Hogan was a socialist activist in Arkansas. A lawyer and journalist, Hogan embodied “witty and intellectual” socialism, and he spent a lifetime pursuing social justice, beginning with the Populists in the 1890s and culminating with the socialist movement in Oklahoma, where he spent his final years. His daughter, journalist and activist Freda Hogan Ameringer, carried on his efforts. Dan Hogan was born in 1871. His father, Daniel Hogan, was a Fort Smith (Sebastian County) machinist who had emigrated from Ireland and then served in the Confederate army, while his mother, Alice Hogan, was an Arkansas native. Hogan’s father abandoned the family, and Alice Hogan was granted a divorce and full custody of their three children in 1885. Dan Hogan …

Hogan, Dixon Howard (Dick)

Dick Hogan was a singer and actor whose entertainment career began in the mid-1930s and ended in the late 1940s. He is remembered mainly for his many film appearances during the 1940s, which included notable supporting roles in several popular war-themed motion pictures. Dixon Howard Hogan was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on November 27, 1917. His parents were Dixon Henry Hogan and Agnes Smith Hogan, and he had an older sister, Margaret. His father and an uncle, Ben M. Hogan, owned construction businesses that contracted for numerous Arkansas road construction projects. After graduating from Little Rock’s Central High School, he attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1934–35 before moving to California to further …

Hogan, Edmund

General Edmund Hogan was an imposing figure in territorial Arkansas. A veteran of the War of 1812, Hogan was one of the first settlers in Pulaski County, the leader of the territorial militia, and a legislator. His penchant for lawsuits and disputes rivaled his successes, resulting in a fatal encounter with a political foe. Born about 1780, possibly in Anson County, North Carolina, to Griffin and Mary (Gibson) Hogan, he spent his early years in Laurens County, Georgia. He was a tax collector, sheriff, state legislator, and a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia militia. By 1814, he had resigned his military commission and moved to Arkansas. Around 1803, Hogan married Frances Jane Green, born about 1780 in Pulaski County, Georgia. …

Holland, Jim (Lynching of)

On Saturday, November 26, 1881, Jim Holland, a white man, was lynched in Dardanelle (Yell County) for the crime of murder. Jim Holland, along with William Casey and Charles G. Helphrey, were accused of having murdered a cotton buyer, Burgess James, near Dardanelle in the fall of 1878. They were eventually captured and placed in the jail at Ozark (Franklin County) to protect them from a lynch mob. However, on July 18, 1881, Holland and his accomplices were able to escape from the jail; either their guard, Jim Hill, was careless or they may have drugged him. Holland and Casey were later recaptured in Polk County, Tennessee, having been trailed there by a Yell County lawman named Captain Poole. Holland …

Hollander, Andrea

aka: Andrea Hollander Budy

Poet and teacher Andrea Hollander served as the writer-in-residence at Lyon College in Batesville (Independence County) from 1991 to 2013. The author of four full-length poetry collections and three chapbooks, Hollander has published more than 250 poems and essays in numerous literary journals, including Poetry, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Hudson Review, Doubletake, Shenandoah, FIELD, Nimrod, and Arts & Letters. In addition, she has written book reviews for Kirkus Reviews, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Andrea Hollander was born in Berlin, Germany, on April 28, 1947, to Milton Henry, a physician stationed in France and Germany during World War II, and Blanche Rosalind Simon Hollander. She was raised in Colorado, Texas, New York, and New Jersey. Hollander received her BS from …

Hollensworth, Carroll Charles

Carroll Charles Hollensworth was a prominent member of the Arkansas General Assembly in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Serving as the Speaker of the House and then as the floor leader, he was a central figure in the legislature’s work throughout that period. Carroll Charles Hollensworth was born in Warren (Bradley County) on January 6, 1900, to Presbyterian minister Eli Asa Hollensworth and Mary Elizabeth Lee Hollensworth. He had an older brother and a younger sister. He grew up in Bradley County and attended the local schools, but little is known about the specifics of his early life. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I and afterward married Mayme Bird Stevens. The couple had a son and …

Holley, Donald

Donald Holley was a historian, author, and longtime professor at the University of Arkansas at Monticello (UAM). His scholarship generally focused on agricultural history in Arkansas in the twentieth century. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Arkansas Historical Association in 2007. James Donald Holley was born on February 24, 1940, in Vernon, Alabama, to the Reverend William Albert Holley and Wilma Harris Holley. His parents were from Alabama, but the family lived in Texas for a time when Holley was young. He eventually moved to Louisiana, where he finished his education. On August 14, 1962, Holley married Bankie Rae Hollis at a Church of Christ in Ruston, Louisiana. The couple had two children together. Holley received his …

Hollis, Mary Cal

Mary Cal Hollis is a liberal political activist. A native of Arkansas who now lives in Colorado, she has run for national office on both the Socialist and Green Party tickets. Mary Cal Hollis was born on January 13, 1952, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), one of four children of Cal Hollis and Ruth Bylander Hollis. She graduated in 1970 from Pine Bluff High School. After graduation, she went on to the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), where in 1974 she earned a BA in special education, followed in 1978 by a master’s degree in specific learning disabilities. In addition, she has studied multicultural special education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A self-described “bleeding-heart liberal,” …

Holloway, William Judson

William Judson Holloway was an Arkansas-born politician and lawyer who moved to Oklahoma, where he became active in politics. He led the state of Oklahoma as governor in the early years of the Great Depression. William Judson Holloway was born on December 15, 1888, in Arkadelphia (Clark County) to Stephen Lee Holloway and Molly Holloway. Holloway’s father was a Baptist minister, and he sent his son to Ouachita College (now Ouachita Baptist University). After graduating in 1910, he studied at the University of Chicago. Holloway settled in Hugo, Oklahoma, and while reading the law, he also served for three years as principal of Hugo High School. He entered Cumberland University Law School to complete his legal training, earning his degree …

Holmes, John Clellon

John Clellon Holmes was a novelist and poet known primarily for helping to define the “Beat Generation” of writers. He taught creative writing and literature at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) from the mid-1970s until 1987. John Clellon Holmes was born on March 12, 1926, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, to John McClellan Holmes Sr. and Elizabeth  Franklin Emmons (Betty) Holmes. He had two sisters. During the Great Depression, Holmes’s father moved through a variety of odd jobs, with the family income supplemented when Holmes took a job delivering milk during high school. He dropped out of high school in 1942 and briefly took a job in the Reader’s Digest subscription department before moving to New York City …

Holmes, Theophilus Hunter

Theophilus Hunter Holmes was a lieutenant general in the Confederate army and served variously as the commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department and commander of the District of Arkansas. After he failed to regain northwestern Arkansas and saw failures at the Battle of Arkansas Post and the Battle of Helena, public confidence in his abilities evaporated. After a medical leave of absence, Holmes resigned his command of the District of Arkansas and returned to North Carolina to serve out the rest of the war. Theophilus Holmes was born on November 13, 1804, in Sampson County, North Carolina, to Gabriel Holmes, North Carolina congressman and governor, and Mary Hunter. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1829, forty-fourth …

Holt, Elias (Lynching of)

Elias Holt was murdered in Mississippi County by a gang of disguised men on January 25, 1872, after an accused horse thief implicated him as a conspirator in the crime. Elias Holt, a Kentucky native, was listed in the 1870 census as a twenty-nine-year-old farmer living with his wife, Martha, age nineteen, in Mississippi County’s Big Lake Township. In early 1872, a young man named Jones was arrested and charged with horse theft. During his initial questioning, Jones claimed that Holt had recruited him to steal the horse (with plans to steal another himself), meet him in Jacksonport (Jackson County), and then ride to Texas to get rid of the stolen animals. Jones’s statement, which the Osceola Times decried as …

Holt, George Moreau

George Moreau Holt played a prominent role in antebellum Arkansas as a physician, an Arkansas State Militia general, and a major in service to the Confederacy. He is also the only general officer of the Arkansas State Militia and its descendant organization, the Arkansas National Guard, to be killed in action by enemy forces. George M. Holt was born on July 4, 1831, in Tipton County, Tennessee, the third son of six of Archibald Murphy Holt and Margaret Tilford Holt. His father, initially a engineer, later became a prominent physician in Bedford County, Tennessee. Holt and his brother Joseph followed in his footsteps by becoming physicians. Little information is found to detail the early life of Holt except what is …

Holt, Georgia

aka: Jackie Jean Crouch

Actress and singer Georgia Holt had small parts in the movies and on television, but she was best known as the mother of pop superstar Cher and actress Georganne LaPiere, as well as being the grandmother of musician Elijah Blue Allman and LGBTQ+ rights advocate Chaz Bono. Georgia Holt was born Jackie Jean Crouch on June 9, 1926, in Kensett (White County). She was born in poverty; her father, the teenage Roy Malloy Crouch, was a baker, and her mother, Lynda Inez Gulley, was reportedly thirteen years old at the time she gave birth. Crouch would later have a younger brother, Mickey. Her father taught her how to sing and play guitar during her early childhood. After her parents separated, …

Holt, J. Seaborn

James Seaborn Holt was a lawyer who spent fifty years in private and government practice, the final twenty-three as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He was a member of a prominent family from Boone County that provided three generations of leaders of the Arkansas bar, including three Supreme Court justices and three attorneys general. J. Seaborn Holt, as he was known, was born on November 17, 1884, in Bellefonte (Boone County), a tiny community southeast of Harrison (Boone County), to Joseph Rutherford Holt and Paralee Elizabeth Coffman Holt. His father was a farmer who grew corn, wheat, and oats, and raised cattle. He thought banking would be a good career for the boy and got him a job …

Holt, Jack Wilson, Jr.

Jack Wilson Holt Jr. was chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court for ten years, and his landmark lawsuit against the Arkansas penitentiary caused the entire Arkansas prison system to be declared unconstitutional in 1970, triggering judicially inspired prison reforms in many states. Jack Holt Jr. was born Samuel Wilson Holt on May 18, 1929, in Harrison (Boone County) to Jack Wilson Holt Sr. and Margaret Spikes Holt; he had a younger sister. He insisted that his parents change his name to Jack because children teased him that he had a girl’s name, Sammie. In 1928, his father was elected prosecuting attorney and, in 1934, circuit judge for the Fourteenth Circuit. His father was elected attorney general in 1936, and …

Holt, Jack Wilson, Sr.

Jack Wilson Holt Sr. was an eminent Arkansas politician for two decades in the mid-twentieth century. He was attorney general for three terms before World War II but lost three bitter races for governor and U.S. senator to the dominant politicians of the postwar era—John L. McClellan, Sid McMath, and Francis Cherry. Jack Holt, one of eleven children of Bud and Adeline Holt, was born on February 7, 1903, on his family’s farm along Crooked Creek north of Harrison (Boone County). He entered the first grade at a one-room school at Walnut Grove and graduated from Harrison High School, where he was a basketball and track star. He often rode a pony into town to attend high school. Holt received …

Holt, Joseph Frank

J. Frank Holt was a major figure in Arkansas legal and political circles in the 1950s and 1960s. He served in numerous public offices, including two terms on the Arkansas Supreme Court. Joseph Franklin Holt was born on October 22, 1910, in Harrison (Boone County). One of eleven children of Noah Calvin “Bud” Holt and Malicia Adeline Moore Holt, he grew up in Harrison, where he sold newspapers and worked in a garage while in high school before attending the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He had to drop out of college and return home due to the Great Depression. He worked a variety of jobs, including selling insurance, teaching in the Cotter (Baxter County) school district, …

Holt, Maud Spiller

Maud Spiller Holt was an avid traveler and painter who painted in every American state and throughout much of Europe. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) guide to 1930s Arkansas cited Holt as one of the state’s most accomplished women artists. Today, her paintings are on display at the Arkansas State Capitol, at Historic Arkansas Museum, and in various other public and private collections. Maud Spiller was born in Carbondale, Illinois, on November 1, 1866, the daughter of James W. Spiller and Sarah Patrick Spiller. On December 22, 1886, Spiller married Winfield Scott Holt at Albion, Illinois, and moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County). Winfield Holt became one of the most progressive businessmen of Little Rock and served many years as …

Holtz, Louis Leo (Lou)

Louis Leo (Lou) Holtz is a former football coach and television sports analyst who also became a popular public speaker known for his quips on television talk shows. Along with serving as the head football coach at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) from 1977 to 1983, he also held coaching positions at the College of William & Mary, North Carolina State University, University of Minnesota, University of Notre Dame, and University of South Carolina, compiling a career record of 249–132–7. In professional football, he coached the New York Jets of the National Football League (NFL) in 1976, where his record was three wins and ten losses. Holtz is known for successfully leading the 1988 Notre Dame …

Holyfield, Wayland

Wayland Holyfield is a prolific country music writer and recording artist who wrote one of Arkansas’s official state songs, “Arkansas, You Run Deep in Me.” He is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame. Wayland D. Holyfield was born in Mallet Town (Conway County) on March 15, 1942. He attended grade school in Springfield (Conway County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County) and graduated from Hall High School in Little Rock in 1960—after attending high school in Mabelvale (Pulaski County) during the Lost Year of 1958–59 when Little Rock’s high schools were closed. He attended Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County) on a basketball scholarship and then the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville …

Hoofman, Clifton Howard (Cliff)

Clifton Howard (Cliff) Hoofman, who was reared by grandparents on tenant farms in White County, became a lawyer and politician and held constitutional offices in all three branches of state government. He served in the Arkansas House of Representatives for eight years, the Arkansas Senate for twenty years, four years as a state highway commissioner, and two years on the Arkansas Supreme Court; he also had two separate sojourns of two years each on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. As a close friend and ally of two governors, Bill Clinton and Mike Beebe, Hoofman was instrumental in passing much of the major legislation enacted during their combined twenty years in the governor’s office. Cliff Hoofman was born on June 23, …

Hooper, Philo Oliver

Philo Oliver Hooper has been called the father of Arkansas medicine. He was one of the founders of the Medical Department of Arkansas Industrial University, now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), a founder and the first president of the Arkansas State Medical Association, a founding board member and director of the Arkansas Lunatic Asylum, and vice president of the American Medical Association. P. O. Hooper was born on October 11, 1833, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Alanson Hooper and Magdaline Perry Hooper. After obtaining what education was available in the city at the time, he pursued his education at Nashville University in Nashville, Tennessee. Returning home to Little Rock, he found employment as the chief clerk …

Horn, Robyn Hutcheson

Robyn Hutcheson Horn is a full-time, self-employed sculptor and native-born Arkansan whose work has drawn regional and national recognition and is shown in galleries throughout the United States. Her art is regularly illustrated in craft and woodworking magazines. Horn is the founder and first president of the Collectors of Wood Art, an organization set up in 1997 for the purpose of fostering interest in wood art. She has befriended and supported many craft artists whose work she has acquired while also amassing an impressive collection of wood art, furniture, metal, glass, and ceramics. Robyn Hutcheson was born in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) in 1951 to Bill and Dede Hutcheson; she has a brother, Richard, and a sister, Karen. Her early …

Horner, Elijah Whitt

Elijah Whitt “Lige” Horner served in both World War I and World War II before retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He was instrumental in the first use of Native American languages as military code, selecting the men who eventually became known as the Choctaw Code Talkers in France during World War I. Elijah Horner was born on May 19, 1893, near Mena (Polk County) to James Lafayette Horner, who was a farmer and real estate businessman, and Corah Elfleda Holman Horner. Horner was the youngest of the five children who lived to adulthood. His mother died when he was four years old, leaving him and his brother John to be raised by his older sisters—Mary Belle, Susan, and Oma. After …