Homer Croy was born on March 11, 1883 in Maryville, Missouri, United States. He was the son of Amos J. Croy, a farmer, and Susan Sewell. His parents had come to Missouri from Indiana in a covered wagon after the Civil War. Croy began to do farm chores at an early age; and although he later traveled widely, mentally he never left the rural world of his youth. And, like so many farm boys, he learned to hate hard physical labor.
He studied at Maryville High School. Enrolling at the University of Missouri in 1901, Croy earned his way by writing and editing. Later he claimed to have been "the first student in the first school of journalism. " He did not graduate because he failed a senior course in English (in 1954 his alma mater awarded him an honorary LL. D. degree).
Croy studied a pocket dictionary, memorizing words and learning to use them. At fourteen he sold an article to Puck, astonishing his father when he produced a check for eight dollars.
He continued to sell articles to farm journals. For a time he was employed by the Maryville Tribune (1900 - 1901) at a salary of $3 per week.
Croy worked briefly for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1907, after which he moved to New York City. There he was hired by Butterick Publications to assist Theodore Dreiser, who then was editing three magazines.
In 1914, Croy was assigned to travel around the world, writing magazine articles for Butterick Publications, and he persuaded Universal Film Company to send a cameraman with him to make travelogues. The outbreak of World War I stranded him in Calcutta.
Croy's world trip led in 1918 to the publication of his first book, How Motion Pictures Are Made, by Harper. The same publishing house also brought out Croy's first novel, Boone Stop (1918). Like most of his novels, it was set in small-town Missouri. Several other books followed, but it was West of the Water Tower (1923) that brought him to national attention. Because the reviewers had not been extremely kind to his earlier books, this work was issued anonymously. Ironically, it won critical acclaim. There followed a highly productive and lucrative period.
In addition he published an autobiography, Country Cured (1943), and a volume of reminiscences, Wonderful Neighbor (1945). Late in his career Croy began writing serious nonfiction: Jesse James Was My Neighbor (1949), He Hanged Them High (1952), Our Will Rogers (1953), Wheels West (1955), Trigger Marshal (1957), and Star Maker: The Story of D. W. Griffith (1959).
The critics rarely were kind to Croy, seeing him only as a writer of rural and small-town midwestern humor stories. But underneath the surface in these books were a directness and strength that they mistook for crudity. Croy liked to write letters on the back of letters he had received from others, and these he signed "Two Gun Croy, the Law North of 125th Street" or "Homer Croy, Enemy of Sin and Dutch Elm Disease. "
He died in New York City.
Croy became a bread-and-butter writer for the Saturday Evening Post while turning out almost a book a year for the next two decades. Among his better-known novels were They Had to See Paris (1926), which subsequently became the basis of Will Rogers' first talking picture (later he wrote the scripts for several of Rogers's movies); Sixteen Hands (1938), made into the motion picture I'm from Missouri; Family Honeymoon (1941), turned into a stage play and a movie; and The Lady from Colorado (1957), converted into an opera in 1964.
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He married Mae Belle Savell on February 7, 1915. They had three children.
