Claude Duval legend, including claims of alchemy, gambling, and much womanising. He is reported to haunt the Holt Hotel along the A4260 (Oxford Road) in Oxfordshire, a hotel where he spent many nights when it was a small coaching inn. Recent historians have reappraised the legacy of Duval. James Sharpe in "Dick Turpin" regarded Duval as the most significant figure in the shaping of the highwayman myth. John and Philip Sugden's "The Thief of Hearts" reconstructs what is known of the historical Duval, using much fresh evidence, and shows that the traditions about the Frenchman were used by such literary luminaries as
John Crittenden Duval Texas judge. The men's father, William Pope Duval, was a long-time Territorial Governor of Florida. John Crittenden Duval John Crittenden Duval (1816–1897) was an American writer of Texas literature. He has been noted as being the first Texas man of letters and was dubbed the "Father of Texas Literature" by J. Frank Dobie. His "Early Times in Texas" was initially published serially in 1867 in "Burke's Weekly" (Macon, Georgia) and was finally published in book form in 1892. The story, which became a Texas classic, recounted Duval's escape from the Goliad Massacre, in which his own brother Burr H. Duval