According to family tradition, his paternal great-grandmother was the daughter of a Tahitian chiefess and Lucien Bonaparte, the younger brother of French Emperor Napoleon, while his mother was the illegitimate daughter of British Admiral Lord George Paulet and granddaughter of Kamehameha I.

The Holt family were relations of the Dominises through Mary Jones Dominis, whose sister was his grandfather's first wife.

[5] Holt initially worked as a teacher at ʻIolani School before gaining royal favor.

[6] Due to his family connection, Holt served many positions in the royal inner circle of the Hawaiian Kingdom during the reign of King Kalākaua.

With former Hawaiian royal Prince David Kawānanakoa, he served as a delegate to the 1900 Democratic National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, in which William Jennings Bryan was nominated.