Robert Hogg was my fifth great-grandfather, through my paternal line. His story is very adventurous as told in The Genealogy of the Jackson Family prepared by the Rev. Hugh Parks Jackson with assistance from the Rev. Hugh Hogue Thompson, DD, and James R. Jackson, Esq., published in 1890. This book is available in its entirety in the card catalog on ancestry.com. Robert Hogg’s son Robert Fulton Hogue grew up to marry Mary Jackson, cousin of Andrew Jackson, and thus the inclusion in the Jackson genealogy.
This is the story of Robert Hogg as told in chapter one of the Jackson story, by Hugh Hogue Thompson, D.D. in 1890: (note: Covenanters were Scottish men and women who refused to renounce their personal covenant with God and go back to the Catholic Church. They were willing to fight and die for their right to worship freely.)
“The Hogues were of Scotch origin. Their Scottish name was Hogg. The name was changed after they reached America, under the impression that was the American pronunciation.They resided in the highlands of Scotland and belonged to that sturdy race of Scotch Covenanters who were made to feel the iron hand of persecution in the days of Bloody Mary. The family of which our great-grandfather was one, consisted of nine brothers, all of whom resided in the same neighborhood, and were identified with the covenanters. On a certain occasion they, together with many of their friends, were assembled for worship in one of the glens of the mountains, and were surprised by a company of the persecutors. They fled from the presence of their foe, and hid themselves in the mountains. This was the last meeting of these brothers. They were never permitted to reunite in this world. Robert, our immediate ancestor, secreted himself for a time, and after enduring much suffering and many privations, succeeded in getting word to his wife and child, and after many delays and disappointments, disposed of his property, reached a seaport and took ship for America, and after a tedious and perilous passage landed in Philadelphia about the year 1755. The other brothers remained in Scotland. We have no trace of their descendants further than, we learn that the author of “Hogg’s Tales of the Persecuted Covenanters” was a descendant of one of these brothers, and the Rev. Dr. Hogg of the Egyptian Mission, was a descendant of another brother.
Robert Hogg after reaching Philadelphia, only lived about two weeks, leaving his wife and child, three years old (who was named Robert) in a strange land, and among strangers. His widow with her child, soon made their way out to Chester County, Pennsylvania where she procured a farm with money brought from Scotland. She subsequently married a Mr. Patterson by whom she had several children. …In 1780, Robert Fulton Hogue (the son) married Mary Jackson.”
When I started researching my Hogue family line, this is pretty much all I knew, except of course that my brother and father carried the Hogue name as middle names, and that my paternal grandmother had been Helen Blanche Hogue daughter of Robert Fulton Hogue. This is my and my brother’s decendancy chart:
Robert Hogg (1724 – 1747)
is your 5th great grandfather
son of Robert Hogg
son of Robert Fulton Hogue
son of Hugh Hogue
son of Hugh Jackson Hogue
daughter of Robert Fulton Hogue Sr.
son of Helen Blanche Hogue
Cecil Hogue Youngblood, Jr.
You are the son of Cecil Hogue Youngblood Sr
I did have one other resource before I hit my computer to start my searching for information, and that was a document written by my cousin, Helen Hogue Colley, my father’s generation, the granddaughter of Robert Fulton Hogue, 1850 whom she knew personally. She gave these booklets out at a family reunion when I was about 12 years old. Most of her information is great in that it catalogs the names and birth dates of everyone in Hugh Jackson Hogue’s branch of the family as of her writing in the late 1950’s. As to history, she basically repeats the information given in the Jackson Genealogy, except for two most important pieces of informtion that we find nowhere else! She says the first immigrant, Robert Hogg was married to Mary McNair and that their son’s name was Robert Fulton Hogue! As far as I know, this is the only place Robert Hogg’s wife is named, or his son acquires the name Fulton.
Unfortunately, there apparently are mistakes in both accounts. Of course, I think almost all of us doing genealogical research consider our work as “work in progress”. It is perhaps as complete and correct as we can find records and /or family stories to support at the time of our writing. As technology improves, as records are sorted out and made available, more accuracy and knowledge is possible. However, with all the looking and searching I did, I could not prove the name of Robert’s wife, which is very controversial, nor could I prove where in Scotland he came from, or who his parents, siblings, or grandparents were! There were many other Hogues/Hoggs/Hoges/Haigs in the United States, but I couldn’t prove my kinship to any of them, because I needed to know more of his line! After hitting my head on a brick wall for a long time, researching and getting nowhere, I read a blog titled Moore Genealogy by Charles Moore, and his post about knocking down brick walls. In his post, Charles recommended using DNA as the ultimate weapon to break through brick walls. Since I had worked on ancestry.com a lot for my research, I had already considered doing that. Reading this post however gave me the motivation to actually do it!
Having my DNA done on ancestry.com has been a phenomenal blessing in my life! Not that it broke down so many brick walls necessarily, although it did help, but it gave me cousins! In the last six months or so since I had my DNA done, I have perhaps met a hundred or more cousins–and I have at least 4000 more matches to explore! LOL Many of them I now talk with daily on facebook! I love it! As far as the Hogue family in particular, I was thrilled to find several cousins in my exact same Hogue line, and some that I was kin to by DNA, according to the results, but who were in a different line of Hogues, Hoggs, or Hoges that I knew nothing about! It was so exciting! Unfortunately, I still could not find the complete ancestral line for my Robert Hogg, b. 1724, and realized I could find no one else who knew either! I decided to recruit a research group and invited a group of Hogue cousins and researchers to come together and see if we could first identify Robert Hogg’s parents,brothers and ancestral line and second identify the true name of his wife which seemed split between Mary McNair and Margaret Wilson!
The search was so exciting! Getting to know my cousins was so much fun as we worked and searched together! We learned a lot as well! One of our major blessings as a group came to us by recommendation and that was one Douglas Moncrieff, Laird Douglas Moncrieff, who lived in Scotland, and was an experienced genealogist who was currently volunteering his services to help people do Scottish research! I tell you, that man deserves a medal for all the help he has given us! Six months we’ve worked I believe–with probably four of those at high-speed intensity! We searched every site we could imagine, read wills, tax records, censuses, military records, anything and everything we could find here and abroad! Several times, we thought we had found Robert’s immediate family, but every time , it would be wrong! We now know, thanks to Douglas, that there were 116 Robert Hoggs born in Scotland between 1700 and 1740! Throw in the upheaval of the historical times in Scotland, with Covenanters being arrested and often executed in the field–so many did not register their marriages or their children’s births.
In our research group, we had family members from California, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Kansas, Colorado, and more! It was amazing! Mae Ware of California had done original research in Pennsylvania as well as other places. She provided us with a great deal of original information including a will that convinced us that our Robert Hogg had actually come probably in 1746 and died in 46 or 47, not in 1755! Then the birth certificate we found for Robert Hogg, son of Robert Hogg with no mother listed but dated, Birth: 3 Nov. 1743 in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, Scotland, seemed like the most correct that we found! If they arrived in 1746, he would still be three years old as reported in The Genealogy of the Jackson Family. Donna Miller of Connecticut found tax records along with the ones Mae had which pieced together a picture of the Patterson family leading to our conclusions of the name of Mary or Margaret’s second husband and her Patterson children. Donna also found a huge piece of information–where exactly Robert Fulton Hogue, b. 1743, d. 1824 was buried, giving us those exact dates to confirm our conclusions! We discovered that James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, was the author of the Hogg’s Tales, and several of his family members came close to fitting our first Robert, but just not quite! Douglas helped us identify Dr. Hogg the Egyptian missionary and backtrack his ancestors–close, but still no golden star! We were despairing! Douglas was becoming THE EXPERT on the Hogg family in Scotland! However, try as we might, we could not verify Robert’s ancestral line!
When what did I discover–and wished that I had discovered six months earlier, but a Hogg family DNA project that had been in existence for at least five years! I “met” one of the administrators, a Henry Dwight Hogge. He explained to me how we might learn a lot about our ancestors if we could have a male from our line give a DNA sample. He had identified five distinct lines of Hoggs/Hoges/Hogues! He knew he did not have a sample from a group descended from the Ettrick Shepherd. One of our group, Ron Hogue from Wisconsin volunteered and gave a DNA sample. Our first preliminary results are due back by March 28! I can hardly wait to see what we find out! The male DNA is supposed to go straight back, like an arrow, to all the men in their line! We should be able to tell if we belong to one of the already identified lines, or if we belong to a different one! According to my autosomal DNA on ancestry, I match several of the different groups that Dwight has identified. I am so interested in what the YDNA says! Will we discover who is our real Robert Hogg? Who are his parents and grandparents? Who is his wife? Where was he born for sure? Stay tuned–we might know in a long two and a half weeks! I will let you know!
Meanwhile, have a great week, until we meet again! Helen
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