Holt: Named for a Postmaster General
Near Lansing, Michigan
Holt, south of Lansing in Ingham County, got its start in eighteen thirty-seven when Frederick Luther and John Norris became its first settlers. A post office appeared in eighteen thirty-nine, and an inn and saloon followed by eighteen forty-eight. For years the community had no distinct name that would stick.
The problem was confusion: travelers kept mixing it up with Delhi Mills over in Washtenaw County. So in eighteen sixty, the town fathers settled the question by naming their community Holt, honoring Joseph Holt, who served at the time as United States Postmaster General under President Buchanan and would later become the Army's first Judge Advocate General. The railroad connection between Jackson and Saginaw ran through the community and helped it grow.
Today Holt is an unincorporated community and census-designated place of roughly twenty-five thousand people.
