Horace Stanley McCoy was born in Pegram (or Pegram's Station), Tennessee, on April 14, 1897. His mother, Nannie (later Nancye) Holt McCoy, was descended from John Peter Pegram, after whom the town is named. His father, James Harris McCoy, had been a rural schoolteacher, but when Horace was born he had become a conductor for one of the three railroads serving Nashville. Soon after he ran a freight warehouse in Nashville and was later a traveling salesman for the Jewel Tea Company.
Later in life McCoy described his parents as “book-rich and money-poor”. Their homestead was a dogtrot cabin in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. As a young man he visited the abandoned site, photographing the environs. Although not obsessively prominent, representations of the area recur in his
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Citation: Koontz, John. "Horace McCoy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 July 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5141, accessed 22 November 2024.]