“In Justice to Gov. Hogg.”

         This letter from a Texas woman who had known James Stephen Hogg appeared in The New York Times, in 1922.

         I am surprised to see in The Times a repetition of that cheap and vulgar myth that “Governor Hogg of Texas called one twin daughter ‘Ima’ and the other ‘Ura.” It appears in an article by Mary Fisher Torrance in the Magazine Section of Oct. 16. The story might be dismissed by a simple statement of the fact that Governor Hogg had but one daughter, but when a man has done as much for his State and reflected such credit upon it as Governor Hogg did upon Texas it is not fair to let flippant writers go unchallenged when they pervert history and do injustice to a good and wise man for the sake of making a “snappy” article.

         The story gives a wrong impression of the Governor. Hogg, whom I knew well personally, was a man of good family and right traditions, a relative, I believe, of the “Ettrick Shepherd” (James Hogg) to whose portrait he bore a marked resemblance.

          James Hogg (1770-1835), James Stephen Hogg (1851-1906)

          Look-alikes??