Janice Holt Giles

Who was Janice Holt Giles?

Janice Holt Giles was a Kentucky author who lived near Knifley in Adair County, Kentucky.

She was born Janice Meredith Holt on March 28, 1905, in Altus, Arkansas; both her parents were teachers. Janice Holt worked for a number of years with a number of church-affiliated clerical jobs, first in Oklahoma and then in Kentucky, having moved to Frankfort in 1939 subsequent to her divorce that year from her first husband Otto Moore, whom she had wed in 1927. In 1941 Janice Holt obtained a position as secretary at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

In 1945 Janice Holt married Henry Giles, who was eleven years her junior. After first becoming acquainted on a 40-hour bus trip in 1943, the couple had subsequently courted via letters to and from Europe, where Henry Giles was serving in the military, and were married the same day Henry returned to the United States. The couple lived in Louisville until 1949, when they took up residence in Adair County within two miles of the area where Henry's ancestors had settled in 1803. They subsequently constructed a house, which took four years to complete, from the logs of four pioneer cabins.