Jim Hogg’s
health seemed to be health seemed to be improving, but Ima and Will convinced
him that in the near future he should visit the famous Battle Creek Sanitarium
in Battle Creek, Michigan. Its founders were Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his
brother, Will Keith Kellogg. They also founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn
Flake Company, turning out the first batch of a historic cereal in 1906.
In early March
of that year, Jim Hogg, who declared he was feeling much better, agreed to set
out for Battle Creek. With Ima and Will, he left his beloved Varner Plantation
and boarded the train to Houston, stopping to spend the night at the home of
Frank Jones, his law partner. The Joneses lived in a handsome mansion at 2116
Travis, and the guests spent a pleasant evening on March 2. Hogg was his usual
jovial self. He happened to remark that when he died he wanted no monuments at
his grave, but a pecan tree and a walnut tree, with the nuts given to the
“plain people” of Texas. Ima scolded him for talking of his death, but he
assured her that he would be around for “many years.”
He died that
night. On the morning of March 3, 1906, twenty-one days before his fifty-fifth
birthday, James Stephen Hogg was found dead in his bed at the Jones residence.
He had died of a heart attack in his sleep. It was Ima who found him. At age
thirteen, she had watched her mother die. Now, at age twenty-three, she found
her father dead.
As the Houston Chronicle reported, Ima was “stricken by the burden of her
grief” and was “under the care of a physician.”
Seldom had the bonds between a
father and a daughter been so close.
Note: Bayou Bend, Ima Hogg’s home for many years, is among the
highlights on Houston’s Azalea Trail, March 7-9 this year. Worth a visit.
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