Holt Collier
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Holt Collier (1848 - 1936) was a noted African-American bear hunter and sportsman who contributed to popular culture by helping to create the Teddy Bear phenomenon. Although born in 1848 as a slave in Mississippi, he joined the Confederate military during the U.S. Civil War, serving with Company T of the Ninth Texas Cavalry in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. At the Battle of Shiloh he witnessed the death of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston. Collier worked as a cowboy in Texas and returned to Mississippi to became a noted bear hunter, killing over 3,000 bears during his lifetime. He served as President Theodore Roosevelt's tracker during the President's famous Mississippi bear hunt of 1902. On that hunt, Roosevelt refused to shoot a wounded bear that Collier had rounded up for him — thus giving rise to the "Teddy Bear" craze. Collier served again as Roosevelt's tracker during a Louisiana bear hunt of 1907. Holt Collier National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi is named in Collier's honor. He died in 1936 and is buried in Greenville, Mississippi.
[edit] References
Minor Ferris Buchanan, Holt Collier: His Life, His Roosevelt Hunts, and The Origin of the Teddy Bear (Jackson, Miss.: Centennial Press, 2002).
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