Ima Kept Her Father’s Secrets, too.

       When Ima Hogg was a little girl, she kept newspaper clippings about her father--but only the good ones. When she edited the family letters in a volume for her brothers, she carefully censored and sometimes destroyed letters that did not measure up to her ideal of a perfect family. For instance, Sallie Hogg’s letters scolding her husband for not writing to her while he was on the campaign trail, and for neglecting their son, Will, on some occasions, do not appear in Ima’s edited collection.

       When Jim Hogg’s critics lambasted him, Ima made sure that their comments did not make it into his official biography. Some documents are missing, as well: the early records of Hogg’s oil business at Spindletop, 1901-1903, “have been lost”--according to Hogg’s biographer. 

      “The time sequence of the formation of the Hogg-Swayne Syndicate is not clear, since most of the earliest records have been lost.” (Robert C .Cotner, James Stephen Hogg: A Biography, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1959), 525.)

       

      Who lost them?