IR October 11, 1888 – SUDDEN DEATH – Last Sunday afternoon, Albert Holt, a well-known colored man, was found dead in his bed at his Washington Street home. He was up and about on Sunday morning and was last seen about 11 o’clock, and at about 2 o’clock, a member of the family with whom he boarded went to his room to call him and found him dead.
From all indications, his death was without a struggle. The immediate cause was heart trouble. He had several times come near suffocation with this malady. A few months ago, Dr. Henry, the Coroner, was called in when Albert was in one of that distemper and told him he would “die of one of these attacks if he didn’t take care.” Albert had been drinking a lot lately, which may have helped with the trouble. No colored man was as widely known as he, and many were the kind words spoken to and of him, except when his greatest enemy got control of him.
His age was 42. He arrived in Ironton in 1856. He came from Kentucky with quite a company of slaves liberated by their owner, Judge Holt. Judge Holt came to Ironton with his old slaves and exercised toward them the most fatherly care while living. He bought a little farm above Ice Creek for one of them. He also purchased the cottage where Mrs. Moreland lives for another, which has remained in the owner’s family ever since. Judge Holt died in this town a few years after his arrival, mourned by his former slaves and the entire community.
The way he happened to come to Ironton was Rev. J. F. Givens, a nephew of his, preached at Spencer Chapel. Mr. Given was probably the finest scholar Spencer ever had. He was a man of wonderfully fine social and scholarly instincts, and he won Judge Holt to him and his liberal ideas. Thus Judge Holt came here and gathered his old slaves about him and helped them to enjoy their freedom.
Mr. Given afterward changed his ideas somewhat and became an apologist for secession, thus losing caste in the Methodist church. He died many years ago, but his wife still lives in Columbus, and his son, a commercial traveler for some wholesale house, was in Ironton last week and shook hands with Albert Holt, his great uncle’s former slave. What singular things old Time gathers in his swathes as he sweeps the world!
Albert Holt was ten when the little colony of freedmen came to town in 1856. He soon became popular with the boys and at once joined in their plays. He went hunting and swimming with them and did his best to make them happy. The recollections of those days inspire the writer to drop a kind word that will brighten the memory of the impulsive, erring, warm-hearted, good-natured, noisy Albert Holt. May the Good Father, who behold the longest lives of men as but moments, see wherein his virtues out-balance his faults, and may he rest in peace.
Addendum:
Sacramento Daily Union 1 April 1861 – Dr. Peter C. Holt died at Ironton, Ohio, on the 2nd instant, in his seventy-ninth year. He was a native of Petersburg, Virginia, but he came to Kentucky at an early age. During the last four years, he has resided at Ironton, where he had taken up his abode to benefit his thirty slaves, whom he had emancipated.
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