Melville Davisson Post (April 19, 1869–June 23, 1930) was an American author, born in Harrison County, West Virginia[1]. His family settled in the Clarksburg, West Virginia area in the late 18th Century. He earned a law degree from West Virginia University in 1892, and was married in 1903 to Ann Bloomfield Gamble Schofield. Their one child died while an infant, and Mrs. Post died of pneumonia in 1919. He was an avid horseman, and died on June 23, 1930, after a fall from his horse, and was buried in Harrison County.[2] Although Post's name is not immediately familiar to those outside specialist circles, many of his collections are still in print and many collections of detective fiction include works by Post. Post's best-known character is the mystery-solving, justice dispensing Virginian backwoodsman, Uncle Abner. Post also created two other recurring characters, Sir Henry Marquis and Randolph Mason. He also wrote two non-crime novels. Uncle Abner is the best-known literary creation of Melville Davisson Post. Uncle Abner solved the mysteries that confronted him in a backwoods Virginia community, of which he was squire, in the first years of the nineteenth century, before the infant American nation had any proper police system. He had two great attributes for his self-imposed task: a profound knowledge of and love for the Bible, and a keen observation of human actions. One example of Uncle Abner's keen deductive skills is his showing a deaf man had not written a document, because a word in it was phonetically mis-spelt.