Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of David Hogg of Letcher, Kentucky
David Hogg’s story begins in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and ends on the plains of western Oklahoma. In most official Oklahoma records, he appears simply as David Hogg. Later cemetery and genealogical references sometimes call him James David Hogg, but the public record of his career is the record of David Hogg, teacher, county officer, territorial legislator, and delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention.
He was not one of the best remembered men to leave the Kentucky mountains, but his life followed one of the great paths of the nineteenth century. He was born in Letcher County, educated in Kentucky, worked in local government, moved west, and carried the habits and arguments of an Appalachian upbringing into the making of a new state.
A Letcher County Beginning
David Hogg was born in Letcher County, Kentucky, on March 4, 1850. The Oklahoma Historical Society’s 1929 necrology in Chronicles of Oklahoma identifies him as the son of Silas Hogg and Louisa Rose Hogg. His mother, Louisa, was born in Wolfe County, Kentucky, and belonged to a family whose roots reached through Virginia and Pennsylvania before settling in the Kentucky mountains.
The Hogg family’s Kentucky world was an older mountain world of kinship, farms, local schools, county offices, and hard travel. Hogg was born only a decade before the Civil War divided communities and families across Kentucky. The later Oklahoma account of his life remembered him as a Kentuckian first, a man whose public life began in the counties of the upper Kentucky River country before it moved westward.
Education and Work in Kentucky
Hogg received his education in the common schools and at Greenbrier Seminary near Mount Sterling, Kentucky. That detail matters because it places him among the mountain men who used education as a road into public service. He later taught school in Kentucky for about eleven years. Teaching was not only an occupation in that period. It was often one of the first steps toward local leadership.
His public career in Kentucky continued in Wolfe County, where he served eight years as county clerk. The office placed him near the center of county life. Deeds, court papers, marriages, public orders, and local business passed through the clerk’s office. For a man who would later serve in territorial politics and a constitutional convention, those years in Wolfe County gave him practical experience in law, records, and local government.
Hogg’s family life also belonged to this Kentucky chapter. He married Mary J. Sample in 1876, and they had four children. After her death in 1884, he later married Matilda J. Murphy, with whom he had five more children. The Oklahoma necrology preserved these family details alongside his offices, showing how closely his private household and public life were remembered together.
From Kentucky to Old Greer County
In 1891, Hogg left Kentucky and moved to Eldorado in Greer County, Texas, an area that later became part of Oklahoma. The move placed him in a complicated borderland. Greer County was then organized under Texas law, but the region would eventually be attached to Oklahoma Territory. Hogg arrived in a place where county lines, state claims, and political authority were still being worked out.
There he again entered local government. He served as a justice of the peace and as a county commissioner. These offices were fitting for a man who had already spent years in county records and local administration back in Kentucky. From Letcher County and Wolfe County to old Greer County, Hogg’s public life stayed close to the courthouse, the record book, and the needs of new communities.
Grand and the Vanished County of Day
Hogg later moved to Day County, Oklahoma Territory, where he served as county treasurer. Day County was one of the short-lived counties of territorial Oklahoma. It began as County E, was opened to non-Indian settlement in 1892, and was soon renamed Day County. Its county seat moved to Grand, where a courthouse was built in 1893. In 1896, that courthouse burned, destroying all county records.
That loss matters for anyone trying to follow Hogg’s paper trail. Some parts of his Day County career may be difficult to reconstruct because the courthouse fire destroyed local records before Oklahoma statehood. The Oklahoma Historical Society’s account of Day County confirms that Hogg, a former county treasurer from Grand, later represented the Forty-third District at the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention.
Day County itself did not survive statehood. When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the northern part of the old county became part of Ellis County, and the southern part became part of Roger Mills County. Grand, once a county seat, later became a ghost town site. Hogg’s Oklahoma life was tied to a county that disappeared from the map, which helps explain why his name is not as easily remembered as some other territorial figures.
Territorial Politics
Hogg’s career moved from county office into territorial politics in 1904, when he was elected to the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature from Day and Roger Mills counties. The official Oklahoma Red Book, published in 1912 under state supervision, lists David Hogg as the representative for the Twenty-fifth District in the Eighth Oklahoma Territorial Legislative Assembly.
This was the last period before Oklahoma became a state. Territorial legislators worked in a government that was still temporary by nature, but their decisions helped shape roads, counties, public institutions, and the political culture that statehood would inherit. Hogg entered that world as a man already tested by Kentucky county office, old Greer County service, and Day County government.
The Constitutional Convention
In 1906, Hogg became part of a larger political moment. Oklahoma and Indian Territory were moving toward statehood, and delegates were chosen to write a constitution for the new state. A contemporary newspaper, The Baptist Rival of Ardmore, reported in September 1906 that David Hogg had been named by Day County Democrats as a constitutional convention candidate.
He was elected from District No. 43 and served in the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention of 1906 to 1907. The 1929 Oklahoma necrology records that he served on several committees, including agriculture, private corporations, public roads and highways, judicial apportionment, and other special committees. These assignments were not decorative. They touched some of the most practical questions facing a new state, including roads, courts, corporations, and farming interests.
For a man born in Letcher County, Kentucky, Hogg had traveled a long road. He had gone from the mountain schools of Kentucky to the convention hall where Oklahoma’s constitution was debated and shaped. His career shows how Appalachian migration did not always lead only to farms, mines, or railroads. Sometimes it led to courthouses, legislatures, and constitutional debates in newly forming states.
The Suffrage Debate and Hogg’s Mother
One of the clearest glimpses of Hogg’s voice in the convention comes from the debate over woman suffrage. A later article in Chronicles of Oklahoma, drawing from the convention proceedings and debates, describes Hogg speaking against woman suffrage and using the memory of his mother to make his argument. He referred to himself as having been left an orphan boy after his father was killed in 1858, and he remembered his mother as the figure who raised him and his brother.
His argument placed him plainly on the anti-suffrage side of that debate. He held up his mother’s domestic labor and sacrifice as his model, including the image of her “spinning on her little wheel.” It is a revealing moment because it shows both the emotional force of his mountain family memory and the limits of his political views. Hogg honored his mother deeply, but he used that memory to argue against expanding political rights to women.
That tension should not be hidden. It belongs to the historical record. Hogg’s life was part of a larger story of public service, migration, and state-building, but it also included positions that modern readers will rightly recognize as restrictive and unequal. The value of studying him is not that he was always right. It is that his life shows how a man from the Kentucky mountains carried his upbringing, beliefs, memories, and contradictions into the founding politics of Oklahoma.
Later Years and Death
After statehood, Hogg remained remembered in western Oklahoma public life. In July 1909, the Cheyenne Star referred to “Hon David Hogg,” described him as a former representative from Day County during territorial days, and reported that he gave one of his characteristic public talks. The paper noted that he was a favorite in that section of the country and held the attention of his audience.
Hogg died on November 13, 1918. The Oklahoma necrology states that he was buried in Roger Mills County near his old homestead. By then, the county names around him had changed, Day County had vanished, and Oklahoma had become a state. Yet the arc of his life remained clear: Letcher County birth, Kentucky education and office, western migration, territorial politics, constitutional service, and burial on the plains he helped bring into statehood.
Why David Hogg’s Story Matters
David Hogg’s life is worth remembering because it connects Appalachian Kentucky to the making of Oklahoma. He was not simply a man who left the mountains. He was a man shaped by them. His education, his teaching, his Wolfe County clerkship, and his family memory all belonged to Kentucky before his career belonged to the West.
His story also reminds us that Appalachian history does not stop at the mountain line. People from eastern Kentucky carried their habits, skills, politics, faith, prejudices, and ambitions into other regions. Some became laborers. Some became soldiers. Some became farmers and teachers. Some, like David Hogg, helped build the legal and political framework of places far from home.
He began in Letcher County, but his record stretches through Wolfe County, Greer County, Day County, Roger Mills County, and the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. In that journey, one can see a larger American movement: mountain people leaving home, remaking themselves, and leaving marks on the public life of other states.
Sources & Further Reading
Harrison, Luther. “Necrology.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1929): 343–351. https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1826921/m1/151/
Richards, W. B., comp. The Oklahoma Red Book. Vol. 2. Oklahoma City: Secretary of State, 1912. https://archive.org/stream/oklahomaredbook00okla/oklahomaredbook00okla_djvu.txt
Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the Proposed State of Oklahoma: Held at Guthrie, Oklahoma, November 20, 1906 to November 16, 1907. Muskogee, OK: Muskogee Printing Co., 1907. https://archive.org/search?query=%22Proceedings+of+the+Constitutional+Convention+of+the+Proposed+State+of+Oklahoma%22
Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Oklahoma. Guthrie, OK, 1907. https://gateway.okhistory.org/search/?q=%22Journal+of+the+Constitutional+Convention%22+%22Oklahoma%22
James, Louise Boyd. “The Woman Suffrage Issue in the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 56, no. 4 (Winter 1978–1979): 379–392. https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc2099553/m2/1/high_res_d/1978-v56-n04_a01.pdf
Everett, Dianna. “Day County.” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Oklahoma Historical Society. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=DA019
“Constitutional Convention Candidates.” The Baptist Rival. Ardmore, Indian Territory, September 28, 1906. https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc2044293/m1/3/
“Hon. David Hogg.” Cheyenne Star. Cheyenne, Oklahoma, July 8, 1909. https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1719431/m1/1/
“Old Day County Oklahoma Territory.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 13, no. 2 (June 1935): 213–223. https://archive.org/stream/chroniclesofokl1319okla_0/chroniclesofokl1319okla_0_djvu.txt
Richards, O. H. “Early Days in Day County.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 26, no. 3 (Autumn 1948). https://archive.org/stream/chroniclesofokla2619okla/chroniclesofokla2619okla_djvu.txt
Squire, C. A. “Old Grand, Ghost Town.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 28, no. 4 (Winter 1950–1951). https://gateway.okhistory.org/search/?q=%22Old+Grand%2C+Ghost+Town%22
Ranck, M. A. “Some Remnants of Frontier Journalism.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 8, no. 4 (December 1930). https://gateway.okhistory.org/search/?q=%22Some+Remnants+of+Frontier+Journalism%22
Ranck, M. A. “Some Remnants of Frontier Journalism.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 9, no. 1 (March 1931). https://gateway.okhistory.org/search/?q=%22Some+Remnants+of+Frontier+Journalism%22
Ellis, Albert H. A History of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Oklahoma. Muskogee, OK, 1923. https://archive.org/search?query=%22A+History+of+the+Constitutional+Convention+of+the+State+of+Oklahoma%22
Hurst, Irvin. The Forty-Sixth Star: A History of Oklahoma’s Constitutional Convention and Early Statehood. Oklahoma City: 1957. https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=The+Forty-Sixth+Star+A+History+of+Oklahoma%27s+Constitutional+Convention+and+Early+Statehood
Gittinger, Roy. The Formation of the State of Oklahoma, 1803–1906. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939. https://archive.org/search?query=%22The+Formation+of+the+State+of+Oklahoma%22
Oklahoma Historical Society. “Enabling Act.” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=EN001
Find a Grave. “James David Hogg.” Memorial, Center Point Cemetery, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/search?firstname=James+David&lastname=Hogg&birthyear=1850&deathyear=1918
FamilySearch. “David Hogg,” genealogical profile and indexed record leads. https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.givenName=David&q.surname=Hogg&q.birthLikePlace=Kentucky&q.birthLikeDate.from=1850&q.deathLikeDate.from=1918&q.deathLikePlace=Oklahoma
Author Note: David Hogg’s story shows how Appalachian lives often stretched far beyond the mountains while still carrying mountain roots with them. This article follows the available public record, especially Oklahoma Historical Society material, while noting where local Kentucky and county records could add more detail.