On 6 July 1936, my maternal great grand-aunt, Mary Lucretia (Dixon) Stalnaker, who was a widow, married her 2nd husband, Thomas Gilmore Hogg, in West Virginia. She was 43. He was 33 and had also previously been married. Tommy worked as a hired hand for the Dixons. The two had flirted with each other at the store owned by Mary's mother. Thomas was quite a different match from her first husband, Walter, who was 26 years her senior. This time, she'd be the older, wiser one of the relationship.
In a previous blog post, I wrote about the supposed suitors that Mary had, due to the sheer number of postcards she had received and kept from eligible bachelors back in her prime, before she was married. But many blogs previous to that one, I wrote of a "Spanish influenza" victim in my family tree who just happened to be photographed in front of a big brick house belonging to Mr. Thomas Hogg. To my surprise, Tommy Hogg's niece, Nancy, ran across the article and let me know of her connection! She was blown away to have discovered a blog mentioning her father's brother. And, of course, I was pleased that she had stumbled upon it. Nancy is even in possession of the same photo, above, of Mary and Tommy on their wedding day.
The coincidences in this encounter did not stop there. Nancy and I got to talking about Mary and Tommy in further detail, namely, their life partners before their 2nd marriages to each other. At the time that she reached out, I had had no idea Tommy had been previously married. Nancy informed me it was to a woman named Margaret Cole.
This struck a chord with me, because Mary's sister, Beatrice, my great grandmother, married a man named William Cole after her 1st husband, Chester Dean, died. In addition, I knew the Coles had somehow been entwined with my family previous to that union. It seemed plausible that Margaret Cole could have somehow been related to William Cole, given the two lived in and about the same time period and place as each other. After some further digging, it was confirmed, that Margaret was William's sister! We had managed to glue these two loose ends together.
Now, I can't go patting myself on the back for this exactly, because not too much later on, I remembered I had recently received correspondence from my great aunt Sheila (Mary and Tommy's niece) in which she had described all of her aunts in detail. And, of course, when I reviewed the letter, I found Sheila had already divulged this piece of information to me already! She had already outlined how the Cole family was previously known to our family before my great grandmother had married William Cole. At least I could now say this information was independently verified!
Nancy filled me in on some additional Cole background. Nancy had previously met a man named Henry Cole, who was purportedly Tommy Hogg's son by way of his first marriage to Margaret Cole. Henry had kept his mother's maiden name, rather than the Hogg surname. Nancy had lost track of him over the years and was trying to hunt him down. Amazingly, she found him living in Ohio in May of 2022! And she was able to communicate with him by email in the days following and receive some recent photographs. Sadly, though, before they had had a chance to reconnect in person, he passed away just a couple short weeks later, on June 11th. It was as if the universe just wanted his ties to the family to be reestablished before he was to forever leave this world. That was just another serendipitous moment in my interactions with Nancy since penning the first blog post that caught her eye.
Then, Nancy shared with me that Aunt Mary, on top of being blessed with a clear mind until the end, had been an avid quilt-maker. This doesn't surprise me one bit, as I have seen my fair share of quilts made by my mother's branch of the family. All of the women on her side of the tree appeared to excel in this field (I most certainly did not inherit this gene).
Nancy mentioned that Aunt Mary quilted all the time and was a member of the quilt ladies at her church. She added that Aunt Mary had a big quilt frame in the upper floor of her house that she was always quilting on. And Nancy had even received a quilt from Aunt Mary as a wedding gift in 1982 that she had made at the ripe old age of 89! Mary had even left her name and age embedded in the quilt. What a treasure.
The quilt was fit for a double bed and the fabric was thick polyester, making it very sturdy. Nancy was able to get a lot of use out of it when her daughter was a baby, because it washed well.
Here's where my favorite coincidence comes into play! As much as I was appreciating the family tales Nancy was sharing with me, I wanted to be able to give something of value back to her. I went rummaging through my grandmother's old photo albums to pick out any pics I could find of Mary and Thomas Hogg. To my dismay, the couple were nearly ghosts amongst my keepsakes. I found a few photographs here and there, but most were quite "modern," some even appearing in the form of a Polaroid. This was disappointing, but one of the Polaroids sprung out at me.
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Aunt Mary was sitting in front of her sewing machine with little square cutouts of material strewn about. The photo was dated 19 February 1982. And upon closer inspection, those little squares were perfect matches to the polyester squares that made up one side of Nancy's 1982 wedding gift quilt! I had a photo of its construction!
These are the types of stories you just can't make up. Had Nancy never connected with me, there's no way I would ever have looked twice at this picture, and there's certainly no way I would have ever known that the quilt being produced in the picture still exists in someone's home to this day, as a cherished wedding gift, nonetheless.
Although I may not have many photographs of Aunt Mary, I have a much clearer picture of who she was, thanks to my newfound cousin, Nancy, and my great aunt, Sheila. Between the two of them, I learned a good deal about the Hoggs.
Nancy referred to them as "no-nonsense people" and not really kid friendly. Though, Aunt Sheila did think Mary and Tommy preferred her and her siblings over other children. She remembers spending plenty of summers with Aunt Mary and sleeping upstairs, which she never found comfortable. She did say that Aunt Mary would always get jealous if Sheila planned to visit her dad's sister, Angela, who lived nearby. Sheila would spare Mary's feelings by curtailing her visits with Aunt Angela.
If there was one draw to being at Mary and Tommy's house, it was their fine food! Nancy regaled about Mary's wonderful cooking. She remembers her potatoes with butter and parsley, breaded tomatoes, chicken and noodles, and pies!
Their house at 8 Highland Heights, in Wheeling, West Virginia, may have been on the smaller side in the suburbs, but their large yard surely made up for it. And the entire lot was essentially a garden, with the Hoggs as master gardeners. Nancy recalls getting both fruit and veggies from them to feed their large family.
Aunt Sheila said out of all the siblings, Aunt Mary and Uncle Tommy lived the closest to her mom (Mamu) and "Pop" Cole. So Mamu and Aunt Mary canned foods together all spring and summer. And Uncle Tommy had a car, so he'd drive the two of them about town and to church and other places.
Later in life, Mamu bought a mobile home and moved it onto the Hoggs' property. It was on a vacant lot next to their home near the garden, and she'd call it her "doll house." Sheila says her mom really enjoyed living there.
From their own experiences, Nancy found Mary to be the hardest working person, and she noted that Mary always kept her house immaculate. Nancy's dad, who was born a whole 2 decades after his older brother, Tommy Hogg, looked to Tommy as a father figure. Nancy got the sense that not all of the siblings favored Tommy, but that wasn't the case for he and her dad.
Sheila described Tommy as being very patient, while she said Mary could be "mean" sometimes. Sheila quoted her dad as saying "She (Mary) has a heart of gold, but damn her ways."
Well, maybe that's just the Hogg lifestyle! And I'm happy to share a glimpse of it. It wouldn't have been possible though, without Nancy Hogg, who supplied nearly every photo in this article and whose connection was the spark that initiated writing this up.
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