Time to Meet the Family

If we were to wind the clock backwards on fugitive John Hogue, at this critical juncture in his criminal career, and step far beyond the "prominent Kanawha Valley family" the Winnipeg newspaper insisted was his heritage, would it have been a surprise to discover that this convicted murderer could claim as his second great grandfather the fourth—and even now the longest-serving—Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court?

The man holding those honors was, of course, John Marshall, whose name and significance is recognized in this country today, even though he held that esteemed position from 1801 until his death in 1835. The line of descent connecting him to that unfortunate relative awaiting his appeal in a 1917 jail cell in Windsor, Ontario, also wound its way through the Harvie family, of which I have several relationships, myself.

John Marshall's only daughter, Mary Marshall, married Major General Jacquelin Burwell Harvie. Among their children was a daughter, Virginia, who married a doctor, Spicer Patrick, who eventually settled with his family in Charleston, West Virginia. One of those children was their daughter, Susan Harvie Patrick, born in Virginia in 1854, but married in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in October of 1872.

This is where the family story encounters a slight complication. Though married in 1872, by the time of the 1880 census, Susan was back in her parents' home—along with two of her three children. The oldest of the children, it turns out, was enumerated at his uncle's residence. Susan's husband had apparently died within that same year.

Not long after—September 3, 1884, to be exact—Susan married John Syme Hogue, a Charleston civil engineer held in high esteem in his community. With her second husband, she had four children, naming her eldest after his father.

This child, born in 1885, became that same John Hogue who, by 1916, had been wanted in a half dozen cities for engineering feats of a very different sort. Why he didn't follow in the occupational footsteps of his father—or, for that matter, his next-younger brother Andrew—I'm not entirely sure.

What I can be fairly certain of, though, is that his brother Andrew maintained just the right sort of networking connections to insure one was still seen as a respectable member of the community. Enough, that is, to be able to enlist the support of the state's governor in his quest to disentangle his brother from the mess into which he had ensnared himself in that escapade up in Canada.

Above: Genealogical Chart of the Marshall Family, produced circa 1900, which is displayed on a downstairs wall of the family's Richmond, Virginia, home. Showing descendants of John Marshall and his siblings, out to the level of their great-grandchildren, it can be better viewed here, courtesy of Wikipedia, by clicking on the image in the media viewer, then enlarging it to better read the details.