"I was the only girl in the party."

In June of 1894 Governor Hogg went on a tour of ten Midwestern and Eastern cities to attract investment capital to Texas. With the Governor in special railroad cars went a company of “prominent citizens of the Lone Star State,” as The New York Times described them. They were executives, bankers, investors, journalists, and lawyers, 23 in all. And Ima, age 12. She was the only female in the party.

         She wrote about that trip years later:

        

         It was a very amazing and enlightening experience and Father seemed to believe that anything in which he took part was becoming for me also. The men on these trips were not restrained by my presence and used to sit around playing poker until late at night. Father gave me a chair around the table where we both looked on. They imbibed very freely of alcohol while Father drank only Apollinaris and Vichy and took no hand in the game. He never seemed to make them feel he was disapproving but explained to them he could not afford to lose even if sometime he might win Evidently they accepted his explanation without further question. I was usually put to bed by ten o’clock. . . .        

The highlight of the trip was New York City. The nation’s largest city then had a population of over 2,000,000. Governor Hogg and his party stayed at what was then New York’s most luxurious hostelry, the Fifth Avenue Hotel, at 200 Fifth Avenue. Opening in 1859, its famous guests had included Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was only six stories tall, but its interior was filled with velvet and rosewood and gilt, and it boasted the first passenger elevator in an American hotel.  Also famous for its cuisine, the hotel served “great compotes of various ice creams, strawberry, pistachio, chocolate, and vanilla flavored from the vanilla bean.” Ima was delighted.

        

         But she felt uncomfortable on the tour. “I was the only girl in the party on the trip . . . I got tired of not seeing any women.”

On June 26 she wrote to Sallie from New York City: “The party had their picture taken today: papa wanted to have mine taken too but as I was the only girl along, I didn’t want my picture alone with a pack of men; would you have it taken either? ”  

Ima’s doting father apparently never thought about his daughter’s discomfort.

Why he chose to take her, and not his eldest son, Will, age 19, on such a tour remains a mystery.