Walter W. Felts, the founder of the Shasta County Index, now changed to the Cottonwood Register, was born December 7, 1848, in Mississippi, the son of Asahel Felts, a native of the same State. He was deprived of his parents by death when but a child, and knows but little of them. He received his education at the Hesperian, and at the Methodist College at Vacaville, Solano County. He purchased an interest in the Maxwell store in Colusa County, and was connected with it three years. In 1885 he came to Cottonwood, and found a small place, wanting in enterprise, and also met with a good deal of opposition in starting his paper; but, aided by a few of the enterprising business men, the opposition was overcome and the town was improved. Mr. Felts is not only a business and newspaper man but is a close thinker, and has recently published a book which shows that he takes a complete departure from old accepted scientific ideas. His work is the “Principles of Science,” and he is about to publish a revised edition. His book is a complete overthrow of some old scientific ideas, dispensing with both gravitation and centrifugal force, and several of the leading educational men of the State speak in the highest terms of his book and the new ideas it presents. Mr. Felts is a Christian man, a believer in the religion taught in the Scriptures, and in his early life he was for some years a teacher. He is a strong temperance man, and favors Prohibition, but is a liberal Democrat.

He was married in 1885, to Miss Fanny R. Rice, a native of Missouri, and they have one son, born in Ashland, Oregon. Mr. Felts has bought considerable town property and is alive to the interests of Cottonwood and the State.

Memorial & Biographical History of Northern California, The Lewis Publishing Co., 1891