The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 420
673 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
presented to my humble household my dear and only daughter. In all the inter-
vening years with each recurring day I have found nothing but pleasure from
this great blessing. My confidence in the purity of your nature, in your deep
regard for the rectitude and refinement of your sex at all times, on all occasions,
firmly supports and justifies my hope that in no act of your life shall I ever find
cause for disappointment or regret. God bless you my worthy daughter.'
Perhaps this letter conveyed only the writer's Victorian effusiveness to its
recipient; certainly the worthy daughter always spoke of her father with
warm affection and abiding admiration. However, evidence abounds that
in the next eight decades Ima Hogg expended extraordinary energy to ful-
fill paternal expectations of female "rectitude and refinement."8 The sec-
ond of four children born to James Stephen (Jim, 1851-1906) and Sara
Ann (Sallie) Stinson Hogg (1854-1895), Ima often recalled a joyous child-
hood centered on home life and highlighted by tomboy games with her
younger brothers, Mike and Tom. When separated from her father while
he served as attorney general (1887-1891) and governor (1891-1895),
Ima wrote many sweetly imperious missives, admonishing her absent par-
ent to write or return home for some special family occasion.'
Jim Hogg is remembered as a populist progressive who, perhaps inadver-
tently, laid the foundation for state intervention in business and daily
affairs by using the Texas Railroad Commission as a weapon to counter
non-Texas business and federal regulation. An advocate of honest govern-
ment, administrative economy, and humanitarian assistance, Hogg sup-
ported prison and education reform and a statewide mental health system.
His young daughter frequently traveled with him to inspect asylums,
schools, and hospitals and often joined him in the wards where she talked
to patients, observed their loneliness, and considered becoming a nurse in
a mental hospital one day.'0 Years later, she presented her father's heavily
annotated copy of Henry Maudsley's work, Responsibility in Mental Disease
(published in 1878), to the Hogg Foundation, noting that this book, which
"James Stephen Hogg to Ima Hogg,July lo, 1895, letter, 3B166, folder 1, IHP.
8 See, for example, "My brothers and I endeavored to continue our father's concern for the
tangible needs of people," Ima Hogg, draft statement to regents, Mar. 8, 1962, MAI9/Ul, folder
4, HFR.
B The most accessible story of Hogg's childhood appears in Virginia Bernhard, Ima Hogg: The
Governor's Daughter (St. James, N. Y: Brandywine Press, 1984), 17-32. See also Robert C. Cotner,
James Stephen Hogg: A Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959), 447-54; "Tolbert's
Texas," Dallas News, June 4, 1967, Ima Hogg biographical file, Texas Room (Houston Pubhc
Library, Houston, Tex.). The children were William Clifford (January 31, 1875-September 12,
1930), Ima (July 10, 1882-August 19, 1975), Michael (October 28, 1885-October 10, 1941),
Thomas Elisha (August 1o, 1887-March 9, 1949). See Ima Hogg to James Stephen Hogg, Dec.
3, 1889, Feb. 7, 189o, Oct., 3, 189o,June 16, 30, 1893, letters, 3B118, folder 2, IHP.
10 Lewis Gould, Progresszves and Prohzbztionzsts: Texas Democrats zn the Wilson Era (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1973), 8-11; Cotner,James Stephen Hogg, 274-352; Ima Hogg to Robert
Sutherland, May 1o, 12, 1968, interview, MAI9/UI, folder 3, HFR, statement to regents, Mar. 8,
1962, MAI9/U1, folder 4, HFR.January
420
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001, periodical, 2001; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101221/m1/488/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.