Charles Frederick Holder

Charles F. Holder with his then record 183 pounds (83 kg) bluefin tuna catch, 1898.[1]

Charles Frederick Holder (18511915) was the inventor of big-game fishing and a founder of Pasadena's Tournament of Roses and the Tuna Club of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island, California.

Biography

Holder came from a wealthy Massachusetts Quaker family. His father was the zoologist Joseph Bassett Holder (1824-1888) and his mother Emily Augusta Gove.[2]

After working as a curator at New York's American Museum of Natural History, he moved to Pasadena, California in 1885. A passionate naturalist throughout his life, he was known for his books on marine zoology and the first books on big-game fishing, a sport Holder pioneered in 1898.[3][4] His books are noted for their combination of accurate scientific detail with exciting narratives.[5]

From 1890 to 1891, Holder was a President of the Tournament of Roses Association, and for 1910 he was named the tournament grand marshal. He became known in Pasadena, California, as a businessman, philanthropist, and conservationist/sportsman. In 1898, he founded the Tuna Club of Avalon in Avalon, California on Santa Catalina Island, California, as an international organization that called for proper management of all game fish.[6][7]

In 1910, he traveled with Frederick Russell Burnham to Mexico and uncovered Mayan artifacts, including the Esperanza Stone, a supposedly paranormal relic described in The Book of the Damned.[8][9]

In 1998, he was inducted in the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame.[7]

Bibliography

Holder with the Valley Hunt Hounds
Esperanza Stone. Major F. R. Burnham (left), Holder (right), Yaqui Delta, Senora, Mexico, 1909.

See also

Notes

  1. Big-game fishing (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 01, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online
  2. http://www.emery.research.pasttracker.com/john-anthony008/EMERY8E1.htm
  3. The history of game fishing
  4. "The Leaping Tuna". Historical Marker Database. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  5. Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (2005)
  6. The History of The Tuna Club of Avalon
  7. 1 2 International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame
  8. Charles Holder (1910). "The Esperanza Stone". Scientific American (Scientific American, Inc): 196. ISSN 0036-8733.
  9. Fort, Charles; Horace Liveright (1919). "chapter XI". The Book of the Damned. Horace Liveright. ISBN 1-870870-53-0.

Sister projects

Works related to Charles Frederick Holder at Wikisource

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