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| Don and Sue Hogg;
© Donald Hogg
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In February, 1981, Claude Howard wrote an account of “The Hogg Family in
Scotland and America,” which was copied and revised by D. Parr in October, 1989
in New Zealand. There was a desire among descendants of James Hogg (1770-1835) and
his brothers to draft a more formal document tracing the family line. In this unpublished manuscript, Howard argues
that twenty four members of the Hogg family, adults and children, left Lowland
Scotland and travelled to America in the 1830's and 1840's. These were the
families of Robert Hogg (1776-1832) and David Hogg (1773-1852), James Hogg’s
two younger brothers, who Howard tells us married sisters, Elizabeth and Elinor
(or Helen) Oliver respectively.
The first of the Hogg family to journey to America, writes Howard, were
two sons of Robert Hogg, William and James, who travelled to America in 1830, five
years before the Ettrick Shepherd’s death. By 1832, these two young men were
living in Silver Lake, Pennsylvania, where their brother Samuel soon joined them.
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| Silver Lake Park, Pennsylvania; Google Image |
By 1833, the brothers’ father and mother, and five younger
siblings, travelled to America, Robert Hogg dying along the way of pneumonia. Despite
his brother’s untimely passing, David Hogg (who had worked for Sir Walter Scott
until Scott’s death in September 1832) set off for America in 1834 with his wife
and children, where he joined his relations in Silver Lake. Within three years’
time, the Hogg clan had relocated to Broome County, New York, where they established
a community named, unsurprisingly, Mount Ettrick. Robert’s daughter
Isabelle, was the last to arrive at Mount Ettrick with her husband and children
in 1845. Given its elevation, this
location is now home to the Greater Binghamton Airport, formerly Broome County Airport.
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| Greater Binghamton Airport; Google Image |
The descendants
of Robert and David Hogg are now scattered throughout the United States. It has
come to our attention that one of them, Donald Hogg, a direct descendant of
Robert Hogg, now resides in Florence, Oregon, with his wife Susan. He has kindly
shared some of his memories with the James Hogg Society, which we now report
here:
I remember meeting my
Grandfather James Henry Hogg (b. 1871) only one time in Denver, Colorado in the
early 1950’s, so I never knew very much about him. My father, George Oliver
Hogg Sr., and mother, Anna Laura Pool, left the center of the US to travel to
the West Coast early in their marriage and lived mostly in Arizona and
California, but resided in Oregon for a time, where my eldest brother, George
Oliver Hogg Jr, and I were born. He was born in Portland, Oregon and I was born
in Oregon City, Oregon. My three other brothers, William Miller Hogg,
Allen Lee Hogg, and Eddie Ralph Hogg, were born in Costa Mesa, California, Newport Beach,
California (near the Pacific Ocean), and Yuma, Arizona respectively. All
four of my brothers are now deceased and I am the last living of our
generation. Fortunately, I do have a nephew with two sons that are
carrying on the Hogg name for our family.
I was born in Oregon
City on September 22, 1937 and three months later we moved back to Yuma,
Arizona. In 1941, we had moved to the Newport Beach, California area and
were living near the coast when WWII started. After that my father
started working in the construction of military bases and we moved all over the
state of California from the central portion of the state to southern
California where we finally settled in the city of Corona just before the end
of WWII. We lived there all through my schooling and for several years
after. I graduated from Corona High School in 1955, worked at different
jobs for a few years, and in 1960 joined the Riverside County Sheriff’s
Department as a Deputy Sheriff, a job I held until December 1965 when I joined
the California Highway Patrol as a State Traffic Officer. I spent the
next 26 1/2 years with the CHP and retired from the Grass Valley CHP office in
Northern California in 1992 where we had moved in 1973.
I met my wife Susan at
a night college class in 1959 and we were married in August of 1961, a union that has happily lasted for over 52 years. We have no sons of our own
to carry on the Hogg name.
My wife and I currently enjoy
traveling and taking cruises and have spent a few months in the United Kingdom
where we have friends in several places that we have met through my law
enforcement career. We have been able to visit several foreign countries
since retirement. In 2004 we moved to Florence, Oregon where we presently
reside.
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| Don and Sue Hogg; © Donald Hogg |
--Holly Faith Nelson
