John Dominis Holt, IV

John Dominis Holt IV (June 4, 1919 – March 29, 1993) was a Native Hawaiian writer, poet and cultural historian. In 1979, he was recognized as a Living Treasures of Hawaiʻi for his contribution to the Hawaiian Renaissance. Family He was born June 4, 1919, in Honolulu, to John Dominis Holt III (1885–1950) and May Ellen Bailey (1892–1975). His paternal grandfather was Colonel John Dominis Holt II, an officer of King Kalākaua and Queen Liliuokalani's military staff. From his mother, he descended from Hawaiian missionary and artist Edward Bailey. Holt was of mixed Native Hawaiian, Tahitian and English descent, known as a hapa haole in Hawaiian. According to family tradition, his ancestors included Hawaiian and Tahitian royalty. Other ancestors include Lucien Bonaparte, the younger brother of French Emperor Napoleon, and British Admiral Lord George Paulet. By the time of his generation, the wealth and social standing of the family were long gone; but he spent his youth surrounded by older generations who loved to tell their memories of the monarchy. These traditional stories inspired his later writing as an adult. His first marriage was to Fredda M. deVere Burwell, an artist from New York. After Fredda's death in 1972, he remarried to Frances Patches McKinnon Damon, a granddaughter of Samuel Mills Damon. They adopted three children: Allison, Melanie, and Daniel. He worked as a landscape designer and contractor. Literary career Holt was educated Punahou School (briefly), Kamehameha Schools and graduated from President Theodore Roosevelt High School in Honolulu, In college, he attended Sacramento Junior College in Sacramento, George Washington University in Washington, DC, and from 1943 to 1946 he attended Columbia University but never acquired a degree. He lived in New York for some time before returning to Hawaii with his first wife Fredda. He worked as a landscape designer and contractor.