James Stephen Hogg's Early Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, if you want to talk about a small cottage that punched way above its weight in Texas history, pull up a chair. We're talking about a little house built sometime in the eighteen sixties, tucked away in Wood County.

On January eighth, eighteen seventy-three, a young man named James Stephen Hogg bought it. He was born in eighteen fifty-one, and at the time he picked up the deed to this place, he was already the editor-publisher of the Quitman News and a justice of the peace. Two titles.

One young man. Just getting started. Then, in eighteen seventy-four, he married Sarah Ann Stinson, a Wood County woman, and the two of them honeymooned right there in that modest little cottage.

Think about that for a second. The man who would go on to become Governor of Texas spent his honeymoon under that roof. And the governorship did come, sure enough, eighteen ninety-one through eighteen ninety-five.

But back in those newlywed days, it was just a newspaper, a justice of the peace appointment, and a cottage with a young couple inside it, a long road stretching out ahead. Now, the story of the cottage itself doesn't stop there. Local clubs bought it and moved it to its current location in nineteen forty-six.

Then, in nineteen fifty-two, it was restored, and here's the detail that lands just right: the person who restored it was Miss Ima, the only daughter of Governor and Mrs. Hogg. She saw to it herself.

That cottage started as somebody's build in the eighteen sixties, became a young man's first home, a newlywed's refuge, and wound up lovingly preserved by the daughter of the man who once honeymooned inside it. Some places just hold onto the people who passed through them.

What the marker says

Built in 1860s; bought Jan. 8, 1873, by James Stephen Hogg (1851-1906), who in 1874 married Sarah Ann Stinson of Wood County. When the couple honeymooned in this cottage, young Hogg was editor-publisher of "Quitman News" and justice of the peace -- start of a brilliant career which led to governorship of Texas, 1891-1895. Local clubs bought the cottage and moved it here in 1946. It was restored in 1952 by Gov. and Mrs. Hogg's only daughter, Miss Ima. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962