Hello all and welcome back to the Hogue Connection! I found a few newspaper articles recently that verified some facts about my great grandfather, Charles Sherman “Charley” Hogue. I mentioned in Red River Trails that there was speculation about some of the jobs he held back in Rubottom, OK. My discussion of the articles posted below provide some more insight into our family history.
I renewed my membership with Newspapers.com to research another article I’m working on for a future blog post. I took some time out to search out Hogue articles in the Marietta Monitor and Love County News when I came across these (the pic of Charley is just so you remember what he looked like!):
The first article was from 23 Dec 1910 and announces the newly elected officers of the Masonic Lodge in Leon, OK. Charley was elected to the position of Junior Steward. You can read more about Masonic officers here. The other article, dated 4 Feb 1910, merely mentions Charley visiting Leon for business, probably also related to the Leon Lodge . You can find many mentions of people visiting relatives and going to funerals and other events in the papers of that era. Folks were either nosy or hard up for news.
Charley and Love County, OK
When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the former Chickasaw Nation, or parts of it, became Love County. Remember that Charley had farmed and raised a couple of families in this area since 1880. The Commissioners of Love County, with guidance from the new State of Oklahoma, established road districts within the county and assigned road overseers to supervise the maintenance of those roads. Usually overseers served a one year term which rotated between key members of the community. Charley was appointed to his term as road overseer of the Burney Township in 1916.
The overseer was responsible for maintaining and establishing “draggable” roads. In those days, of the 2,000,000 miles of roads in the U.S., only about 10% were covered in a hard surface. For more info on this, go here. He also hired people to work on the roads and collected the Poll Tax that went along with the repairs. All men between the ages of 21 and 50 were required to work on the local roads for 4 eight hour days annually. If they didn’t pitch in, they were required to pay a tax of one dollar for every day they missed. The articles below verify Charley’s selection as an overseer (17 Mar 1916) and a voting officer (23 Jun 1916).
I learned quite a bit about the road overseer job after stumbling upon these articles. Charley’s brother John, and his first cousin, once removed, Charley Rufus Hogue were both road overseers around this time period. I don’t know if Charley served more than one term, however. Unfortunately, I also found Charley’s name on the Delinquent Tax list of 1918, the year after he passed away. You can’t win ’em all, I guess.
Shout outs…
I wanted to make sure I mentioned some people I’ve been in contact with lately. First, Dave Hoque (yes, that’s a Q) from Tennessee. Dave, like me, was born in San Jose, CA and contacted me about looking into our common relatives in North and South Carolina. I look forward to that in the future.
Second, a shout out to our cousin Beth Gatlin. She has a great blog you can visit here. I asked her for permission to link to her site when I posted about the Gatlins and Gowers (here) earlier. Please check it out!
Third, a quick mention to Scott Hogue of TX who is on the search for his Hogues in that area as well!
Also I mentioned a future post upcoming in this space. I want to thank Randy Seaver for answering an email query I sent out with regards to that post. You can visit his blog here. This future post is a bit controversial and mysteriously criminal. It will likely be over three or four postings coming up soon. Subscribe so you don’t miss them. Thanks for visiting The Hogue Connection!