The Alleged “Hogg Sisters,” or Simple Ground Rules for Collectors of “Odd” Names

Abstract

As a collector of curious and unusual personal names, I often receive letters from persons wishing to share with me examples of such names which they have encountered. And, like my fellow newspaper readers, I have been exposed to the lists of odd names and name combinations that occasionally appear in the feature columns of a number of publications. I am sure that I share with many persons a concern about the authenticity of these names. Yet too many collectors today seem content to accept, at face value, lists of names acquired as hearsay and make little, if any, effort to verify them. How often do I still find, in examining such lists, some of the old familiar jokes that had long ago been fully discredited when painstaking research revealed that no persons with such names ever existed. Not the least number of letters received or lists of names surveyed in newspapers columns have included the two alleged daughters of the late Governor James Stephen Hogg of Texas. There are still persons who accept the existence of Ima and Ura or think it frightfully clever to swear they knew both of them and/or that one or both are still living in, variously, Texas, Upstate New York, West Virginia, Southwestern Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and several other states. It is about time someone laid to rest the myth of Ima and Ura (occasionally joined by a brother H esa and another sister B ea) and rendered groundless all claims to their widespread existence. The truth is that Governor Hogg (1851-1906) had only one daughter, whom he did name Ima, and three sons with the more prosaic names of William Clifford (Known as Will) (1875-1930), Michael (called Mike) (1885-1941), and Thomas Elisha (or Tom) (1887-1949). Ima, the second of the four children, was born on July 10, 1882, and was named for the volunteer nurse-heroine of a Civil Was epic entitled The Fate of Marvin, authored by the future governor's older brother Thomas