On
March 1, 1906, Jim Hogg, who declared he was feeling much better after long
spell of ill health, set out for the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan,
The sanitarium was a famous one known for its holistic approach to medical
problems. Ima and Will had convinced their father to undergo a thorough medical
examination. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the sanitarium’s founder, and his
brother, Will Keith Kellogg, would be better known as the inventors of
whole-grain dry cereals, known as --you guessed it--Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. A
patient at Battle Creek named C.W. Post had already invented Grape-nuts cereal
in 1897, and soon he, too, developed a cornflakes product he called “Elijah’s
Manna” in 1904. It sold much better in 1908, renamed “Post Toasties.” But corn
flakes did not appeal to Jim Hogg, who liked ham and eggs and biscuits for
breakfast.
With
Ima and Will, Jim Hogg took the train from West Columbia to Houston. They stopped
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 there 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. At age twenty-three, she
found her father dead.
James Stephen Hogg, governor
of Texas from 1891 to 1895, was larger than life—figuratively and literally. He
was the focal point, the fulcrum of an extraordinary family. He was buried in
Austin’s Oakwood Cemetery next to his wife, Sallie.
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