A. FRAZIER HUNT - Biographical Odyssey (...page under construction...)

For Hunt's own recollections of the years he lived in North Manchester, Indiana, please click here.

Page references are to Hunt's autobiography, ONE AMERICAN AND HIS ATTEMPT AT EDUCATION (Simon & Schuster, 1938).

 Born December 1, 1885, in northwestern Illinois town of Rock Island on the Mississippi River.

Father: Jasper Newton Hunt; Mother: Amanda Frazier.

Aunt & Uncle, Martha & Joseph Mathews cared for Frazier and his older brother Jasper until they attended college.

A.F. Hunt lived in North Manchester with the J. S. Mathews family, 1893-1903.

Hunt graduated from the high school in N. Manchester in 1903.

Attended Michigan Military Academy (Orchard Lake, Michigan), 1903-1904.

Attended University of Illinois, 1904-1908. Theta Delta Chi. Editor, Illio, 1908.

Advertising writer for Chicago newspaper, 1908-1909.

December 1909, moved to Mexico, bought a ranch. Was with brother Jasper for a time in Mexico. Sugar Cane Planter, 1909-1912.

Married Emma Kern, May 17, 1911.

Returned to Chicago, June 1912.

Bought the Weekly Argus, newspaper in Alexis, IL. Editor and Publisher, 1912-1916.

1914, son Bob was born Nov 28, 1914; first child.

New York Sun reporter, 1916-1918.

Covered Billy Sunday's 1917 NYC crusade, Sunday's first and only crusade in New York City.

Staff writer, Red Cross Magazine (France, 1918)

WWI correspondent for Sun newspaper; war correspondent in Europe (1918).

Joined the Chicago Tribune.

Published telegram/article on the failure of the 1918 Northern Expedition in Russia; Hunt protested the intervention (pp 127-131).

Hunt visited Lenin, Chicherin (Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Tomsky (p. 152).

Hunt was accused of spying and was confused by the Bolsheviks with "Fraser Hunter", a Canadian connected with the Indian army.

Hunt met Gorky (p. 159).

Hunt influenced U.S. policy on non-intervention & U.S. aid to Russia/ Herbert Hoover & Russia's New Economic Policy (p. 168).

In 1919 Hunt delivered actual copy of peace treaty to the Chicago Tribune; inside scoop had MAJOR influence on subsequent policies (p. 170).

In 1919 Hunt went to Japan (p. 174).

In 1920 Hunt went to Siberia (p. 179).

Hunt was war correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. He influenced American policies, including the U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union.

Hunt met Sun Yat-sen (p. 210).

Hunt travelled to the Philippines (p. 212).

Hunt went to India (p. 214); met with Gandhi and the leadership of the independence movement.

Hunt worked for the Hearst Papers.

Returned to Mexico; interviewed Pancho Villa (p. 228).

In 1921 Hunt met Henry Ford (pp. 235 ff).

Hunt travelled to Haiti in 1921.

In 1922 went to Ireland.

Lived for five years in London.

Hunt was close to the author Sinclair Lewis.

Lewis (p. 248): "Say! what in hell is your real name, anyway? You've surely got some other name besides Frazier. My name is Red."
Hunt answered: "Friends and enemies call me Spike."

Hunt (p. 254): "[Sinclair Lewis'] boyhood had been only half a boyhood. It had been the exact opposite of my own full and satisfying one."

Hunt (p. 256) was editorial representative for all of the Hearst magazines in England & Europe.

Hunt's heroes and friends included Sinclair "Red" Lewis; H.G. Wells; Shaw; Lady Astor.

Hunt (p. 259) was "groping to find some satisfying philosophy for society and government."

Hunt (p. 267) was in Turkey.

Hunt was European editor and writer for Hearst magazines: 1922-1925 in Europe; 1925-1928 in U.S.; 1928-1930 in Europe.

Hunt covered anti-Jewish movements in Europe.

Met (p. 280) with Czech president Masaryk.

Interviewed Hitler in December 1922 (p. 284). Hitler was then 33 years old (b. April 20, 1889), a few years younger than A.F. Hunt. This was also before Hitler had written and published Mein Kampf.

(p. 296) While in the U.S., Frazier and wife Emmie had lunch with President Coolidge at the White House. They then went together to the opening game of the World Series. Coolidge's Secretary was an Indiana boy (Everett Sanders).

Hunt (p. 296): "We had common friends back home; Ella, his wife, had come from a farm on my own beloved Eel River, not so far from North Manchester."

Hunt (p. 296): I doubt if [Coolidge--Silent Cal] spoke fifty words during the entire meal and at ball game.

In 1926 Hunt (p. 299-300) bought a Canadian ranch and  befriended his neighbor, the Prince of Wales who owned the adjacent ranch.

Hunt (p. 307): "...the dreams of simple human beings striving for some little happiness and understanding in a world that is largely cruel and intolerant."

Hunt (p. 308) : "My Indiana boyhood novel was done but somehow I had lost most of my interest in it."  What ever happened to Hunt's novel-manuscript based on his boyhood years growing up in North Manchester, Indiana?

Hunt (p. 308): "The old restless urge was still driving me. ...I wanted more and more of it [life]. Apparently I couldn't begin to get enough.

In November 1929 Hunt returned to Russia (p. 309).

Again in 1935, Hunt returned to Russia (p. 316).

Hunt (p. 320-321): "Life is like a river...."  ... "Man, too, is like a river...."

Hunt (p. 327-328) met Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Hunt (p. 328) met Chiang Kai-shek in 1932.

In the 1930s, Hunt was broadcasting for the New York Life Insurance Co., doing 26 living "Great Personalities."

Hunt (p. 330): "The depression had entirely missed me."

Hunt: "I wanted only the beckoning world." (p. 330)

Hunt: "My goose was hanging high." (p. 372)

Hunt: (p. 365) mixed with "the leaders, the writers, students, women, and even the plain and lowly people" in India.

Hunt (p. 374) refers to "the little people" and saw "human needs and longings are universal" (p. 365).

Hunt (p. 399) cast his lot with the "humble people."

Hunt (p. 365) While sympathetic to socialist ideals and social revolutionary ideas, Hunt wrote: "I am fully suspicious of the accepted theory that fundamental differences exist between various classes and races."

Hunt (p. 367) talked with Nehru on Hunt's first visit to India.

Note: Since Hunt's autobiography was published in 1938, other sources need to be drawn on to complete his resume...

PUBLISHER'S BLURB--
During the past twenty years Frazier Hunt has met, touched hands, and talked with as many of the world's great men and women as any living person. Gandhi and Hitler, Lenin and Mussolini, Pancho Villa and Helen Keller, Sun Yat-sen and the Duke of Windsor, Chiang Kai-shek, Ramsay MacDonald, Coolidge, Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt--he has known them all. He has lived through great events, seen history in the making, rubbed elbows with saints and sinners, generals and private soldiers, Nobel Prize winners and illiterate peasants. Perhaps nobody but a product of small town pre-war America could have carried it off as Frazier Hunt did, for he belongs to a generation whose like we shall never see again. Born in 1885 at Rock Island, Illinois, he spent his boyhood in a small Indiana town and after two years in Chicago and three in Mexico he returned to another small midwestern town to edit the local paper. It was with this background that he came to New York in 1916 and joined the staff of the Sun. From New York he went to France and from France to Russia where for months he had the Revolution all to himself. Two trips around the world followed and several long sojourns in Europe. Today, when he is not covering some special newspaper or magazine assignment, he spends much of his time on his ranch in Alberta, Canada.

One American Bookjacket--FRAZIER HUNT AND HIS BOOK:
Nobody ever wrote a book so much like himself as Frazier Hunt. It is as big, sprawling, and informal as its author. It is as typically American. In fact, no other time and no other country could have produced anything quite like it.

Born in 1885 in the Middle West, Frazier Hunt has remained a Middle Westerner in the face of all temptations to belong to other nations. He has worked for newspapers off and on throughout his career, but he has never stayed in one groove. Before the War he ran a plantation in Mexico for several years. After the War he helped Norman Hapgood and Ray Long on Hearst's International and on Cosmopolitan. He wrote, rewrote, ghost-wrote, and secured contributions from the leading writers of Europe and America. He has commented regularly on world affairs over the radio and now divides his time between writing newspaper features, magazine articles, and books.

Frazier Hunt has met and touched hands with as many of the great ones of the earth as any living man, among them: H.R.H. The Duke of Windsor, lady Astor, Sinclair Lewis, Bernard Shaw, Kagawa, Chiang Kai-shek, Manuel Quezon, Emil Ludwig, Paul de Kruif, Calvin Coolidge, Dr. Dafoe, Justice Holmes, Adolf Hitler, Bill Haywood, William R. Hearst, Queen Marie of Rumania, Maxim Litvinov, Helen Keller, Emperor Pu-yi, H.G. Wells, F.D. Roosevelt.

They appear in this book not as headlines but as human beings.

...

Russia, not the United States, attracted him, and for six months he had the Revolution to himself, watching the civil war and the foreign intervention and interviewing Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders. Filled with excitement by all that he had seen, Frazier Hunt returned to the United States and set forth on a trip around the world. In the course of those travels he interviewed Dr. Sun Yat-sen in China. Gandhi in India, and Pancho Villa in Mexico.

Frazier Hunt's next assignment carried him to Europe for several years with occasional visits to the United States. Then came another trip around the world, and more friendships with celebrities in every country. And finally came the book that tells this whole story. One American belongs on the same shelf with the autobiographies of Walter Duranty, Eugene Lyons, and Vincent Sheean. It is primarily a book of adventure, personalities, and one man's effort to understand a bewildering world.

Source: North Manchester News-Journal, February 3, 1941

FRAZIER HUNT IS RADIO COMMENTATOR

Frazier Hunt, well known writer and war correspondent, is broadcasting over Station WLS each Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evening at 6:45. Wednesday evening in his broadcast he spoke of his early life in North Manchester by "sleepy old Eel River." Gorman Grossnickle heard the broadcast and wrote a letter of Mr. Hunt, inviting him to visit North Manchester, and speak at the school and college. He promised to take him up to the "Devil's Hole", the famous deep hole in Eel River above the College football field, which was well known forty years ago, and which Hunt mentions in his book, "One American."

Hunt, whose mother died shortly after he was born, came to North Manchester to make his home with his uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph "Posey" Mathews. The Mathews home was the large brick house on Mill street where the Frank Sausaman family now lives. Hunt, in his book, describes much of the happenings and a few of the characters of North Manchester. Mr. Mathews was an ardent prohibitionist, and every two years ran for congress, although at the most he never received more than 184 votes in the county.

Hunt graduated from the North Manchester high school in 1903, and spent a year in the Michigan Military Academy. Later he attended the University of Illinois. Following graduation at the University he went to Chicago where he got a job as reporter on the City Press. Then followed journalistic and publishing adventures with no great success from any of them and just before the outbreak of the World War he went to New York and obtained work on The Sun. In February, 1918, Hunt went to France as a war correspondent and to continue his stories of the soldiers and camp life under the caption, "Private Danny" in France.

Hunt was sent into Siberia where the American troops had made a vain attempt to halt the Bolshevists. In the ensuing years, Hunt was a roving journalist, usually managing to be where the world news was happening. He has had an interesting career and a fair measure of success. The older North Manchester people would be glad to welcome him if he visits his boyhood home.

Frazier Hunt wrote a number of magazine articles. As compiled by John Knarr, this list includes:

All the Boys Remember Maisie, The Saturday Evening Post, May 27, 1944
America Is Dreaming Again, Good Housekeeping, Oct 1935
Another Covered Wagon, Cosmopolitan, Nov 1925
The Church Rolls Up Its Sleeves, Good Housekeeping, Mar 1933
The Danger Triangle of the World, Liberty, April 21, 1934
The General and the Servant, The Saturday Evening Post, May 13, 1944
He Is Giving the Kids a Break, Cosmopolitan, Jan 1933
He Knew All My Boyhood Heroes, Cosmopolitan, Nov 1925
Henry Ford, Cosmopolitan, Feb 1926
Little Doc, The Saturday Evening Post, Apr 23, May 7, May 14, May 21, May 28, 1938 (about Dr. Dafoe)
President Coolidge, Cosmopolitan, Jan 1926
Red Petrograd Days, Colliers, Aug 8, 1919
The Romantic Soldier, The Red Book Magazine, Aug, Sep, Oct 1928
The Tall Slayer of Billy the Kid, Argosy, Dec 1950
That Burns Me Up! Cosmopolitan, May 1933
This, at Least, I have Learned, Cosmopolitan, Oct 1925
We Pay Red Grange 10 Times as Much as Coolidge, Cosmopolitan, Mar 1926
Where Lightning Strikes, Colliers, Jul 2, 1921
"Argonotes" by Anon., Argosy, Dec 1950

Allan White compiled the following list of Frazier Hunt's books [see also "Frazier Hunt" in Wikipedia]--

Blown in By the Draft: Camp Yarns Collected at One of the Great National Army Cantonments by an Amateur War Correspondent (1918)
The Rising Temper of the East (1922)
Sycamore Bend: Population 1300 (a novel) (1925)
Custer, the Last of the Cavaliers
This Bewildered World (1934)
Bachelor Prince (1935)
One American, and His Attempt at Education (1938)
Little Doc, The Story of Allan Roy Dafoe (1939)
The Long Trail from Texas (1940)
MacArthur and the War Against Japan
The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur
Cap Mossman, Last of the Great Cowmen
The Tragic Days of Billy the Kid
I fought with Custer [collaborated with son, Robert Hunt]
Horses and Heroes, The Story of the Horse in America for 450 Years [with Robert Hunt]

A.F. [Amanda Frazier] Hunt born Dec 1, 1885; d. Dec 24, 1967.

Burial: Newtown Cemetery, Newtown, Bucks Co., PA.