"You could have a fine time."

         Ima Hogg was a belle--no question about it. Did she have admirers besides the mysterious R. W. Alexander? Yes, indeed.

Here are some snippets from her New York days:

         One B.A. Judd wanted to visit her in Texas and bring a friend with him, to meet “Miss Nellie” (Ima’s friend from San Antonio).

         One Ben Robertson invited Ima to visit him in Sewanee, Tennessee. His note said that Sewanee was  “a gay place in the summer & you could have a fine time.” (“Gay” in those days meant “happy” or “lively.”)

         These young men may have been West Point cadets who met Ima at the dances she attended at the U.S. Military Academy.

         At West Point she also caught the eye of Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, Civil War hero, Indian fighter, Spanish American War officer (President Theodore Roosevelt called him a “brave peacock.”) He was a good friend of J. S. Hogg, who wrote to Ima that General Miles wished she had made herself  “known to him” at the West Point Ball. The general obviously had a fondness for pretty girls. Ima’s father promised her that the General would  “dine with us” soon in New York.

         Another famous name, Edward Mandell House, the wealthy friend of the Hogg family who helped J. S. Hogg win the governorship of Texas, and who later became a trusted advisor to President Woodrow Wlson, was also an Ima admirer. He wrote to her father: “We saw Ima while in New York. She is a splendid girl and I was proud of the fact that she is from Texas. I have never seen anyone develop more quickly and more splendidly into perfect womanhood.”

         A Southern Belle, indeed.