Christopher Hogan was born in Hogansville, Troup County, Georgia, on April 13, 1840, one of some 21 children of his father, William C. Hogan. On the death of William’s first wife, Mary Rankin, in 1837, William married Susannah Belcher, who would become Christopher’s mother, and he would become her firstborn son.

Christopher grew up in Hogansville, a town of a few hundred residents located approximately 50 miles southwest of Atlanta and named by and after his father. Christopher and his family enjoyed the trappings of considerable wealth, owned over two thousand acres of timberlands and improved croplands, and they operated successful essential businesses and matters of considerable commercial import including a grist mill, a red-brick kiln and a tannery. William had skillfully negotiated to have Hogansville be the location of a depot for the Atlanta & LaGrange Railroad line, which was quite a coup, given that to do so required the replanning/relocation of the railroad line. Antebellum Troup County Tax Assessor records show that William paid taxes on his ownership of over 50 slaves.

When Christopher was 20 years old, a weighty and life-changing series of events commenced in early 1861. On February 28, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a volunteer army. On March 25, Christopher volunteered for the Confederate Army’s 1st Georgia Infantry Battalion, which later became the 36th Regiment of the Georgia Infantry (sometimes referred to as “Villepigue’s Army”). On April 12, the Civil War commenced.

On May 6, Christopher’s father died at age 57 in Hogansville. On August 6, probate papers concerning William Hogan’s estate were filed by Christopher, his mother and others in the official records of Troup County.

Christopher’s term of service with the Confederate Army was spent mostly in and around Pensacola and Fort McRae, Florida. On March 14, 1862, Christopher mustered out of the Confederate Army at the end of his honorably completed term of service. To this point, Christopher’s story reflected much as did the stories of so many other young southern men of the time.

However, Christopher’s story then took an unexpected turn. After he mustered out of the Confederate Army in March, 1862, he surprisingly enlisted in the 11th Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry of the Union Army on October 17, 1862. The majority of Company C mustered in around July of 1862, but the rest, including Christopher, came into the company in Louisville, Kentucky, a bit later. Their service was chiefly in and around the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.

During this time, Christopher released a single slave who had accompanied Christopher through his service with the Confederate Army and who had come to Christopher upon William Hogan’s death. There is no ostensible record concerning the details of this release, the intention behind it, nor any ostensible record of the identity or outcome of the life of the slave.

Because of the timing and location of Christopher's capture by the Confederate Army in January of 1864, it is believed he played part in the Union Army’s advancements around Dandridge, Tennessee, which ended in Confederate victory. Upon his capture, Christopher was taken to Sevierville, Tennessee, where he escaped a few days later and rejoined his Union military comrades. He thereafter fought in and around Kentucky and Tennessee until he mustered out of his Union Army service on July 7, 1865, at Louisville, Kentucky.

There is documentation indicating that Christopher’s Union Army company spent a brief period on the northeastern outskirts of Atlanta in the weeks preceding the end of the war, but there is no known record of Christopher’s having ever returned to Hogansville then or thereafter.

Christopher’s younger brother, William Hogan, Jr., was only 16 years old when he volunteered for service in the Confederate Army at the start of the Civil War. He fought in and was captured at the Battle of Gettysburg, and then he was released in a prisoner exchange. He was later captured a second time and held under Union bond until the end of the war.

It is assumed there must have been deep and abiding animosity between the Hogan family members and Christopher, given the ostensible and deeply personal nature of Christopher’s betrayal of the Confederacy and the family, exacerbated by the personal impact of his younger brother’s capture and imprisonment at Gettysburg and thereafter. The full weight of the American tragedy of the Civil War appears to have been playing out in the Hogan family.

According to William B. Craig and Jim Hurst, co-authors of The Hogans of Hogansville: The Ancestry and Descendants of William Hogan, Christopher’s life after the Civil War was characterized as follows: “The great tragedy of Christopher’s life was the contrast between the way he actually lived, and the way in which he might have been able to live. Inopportune historical circumstances created an irony which he struggled for years to overcome. He displayed youthful devotion to humanitarianism when the Civil War broke out. Ironically, this choice resulted in prolonged grief and spiritual torment for him. His fellow southerners suffered a torment of a different type. Uniformly condemned for their all too steadfast loyalty, they were doomed economically along with their cultural institutions. Christopher must have benefited from the rich and educational and cultural atmosphere during his privileged youth. This would have entailed liberal and progressive concepts of human dignity from the North and Europe. In the fall of 1862, he abandoned the advantages of being the eldest male heir, and he departed for Kentucky and enlistment as a Sergeant in the 11th Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry of the Union Army. He remained in service of his soul and conscience until the end of the war. Christopher sacrificed a great deal in order to express his idealism. In the opinions of this volume’s compilers, Christopher Hogan displayed a heroic quality of character rare in any family or era. After Appomattox, he understandably declined to go home and face the hostility of former friends, and even family members. He gravitated to a section of Tennessee which had been sympathetic to the Union and married there. Eliza French, Christopher’s wife, was a woman of simple, unhurried character. In the succeeding years, he sought in vain to establish a home where he could reside in tranquility with his family. With the stress of living apart from his Hogan kin, as a stranger in his own native south, the pressure soon took its toll on the alienated man. He could tell very few of his military service, and he lived with the secrecy the rest of his life. He must have become exhausted and disheartened by the ongoing necessity to guard his past and principles from potentially trouble-making neighbors. He lived in Jefferson County, Alabama, from 1872 through 1875. By the middle of 1876, he had escaped to the Ozark foothills near Johnson County, Arkansas, in the hope that the new locale would give him some peace. His move west was certainly a determining influence in his sister, Rebecca’s, move with her family to adjacent Franklin County, Arkansas, that same year. Her presence must have allowed him a feeling of stability for a while. However, he relocated a number of times during the next eight years. By 1887, he made a significant move to Grant County, Arkansas, far to the south of Little Rock. His last attempt at owning land amounted to a few acres near Pine Bluff during the 1890s. He turned the property over to a son in 1905 and retired to a rented home at 529 East 6th in Pine Bluff. Years of personal conflict and the yearning memories of an idyllic childhood in Georgia finally came to a head. Christopher Hogan lapsed into dementia as he entered old age, and he began violently threatening family members. He entered asylum at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Little Rock at age 72, and he died there two years later. A sad testament for an honorable man.”

Apparently unknown, or known and deemed unworthy of note, by the authors of the above book was that Christopher’s service to the Union Army included scouting and, most likely, spying activities. Georgia Genealogy Magazine, Volume 33, No. 2-3 (128-129), in an article titled “Union Spies, Guides, Scouts, Railroad Operatives, and other Personnel, 1862-1864,” lists Christopher Hogan as a scout. We also know with certainty that he enlisted in the 11th Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry, so his service as a scout and/or spy for the Union Army would not on its face be at all surprising.

We do know that when the war was over, officially ending April 9, 1865, Christopher found himself alone in Kentucky, estranged, to say the least, from his Hogansville family. He remained in Kentucky and Tennessee, marrying Eliza French, on December 12, 1867, in Knox County, Tennessee. The 1870 census showed Christopher and Eliza living in Knoxville and Christopher’s profession as being a store clerk. Their first son, William Lowery Hogan, born October 17, 1868, in Knoxville would die less than two years later on September 25, 1870.

Their first surviving son, Abner French Hogan, was born January 31, 1871, in Knoxville; then came daughter, Burtie Hogan, on August 28, 1873, born in Alabama; then son, William Claude Hogan, was born on December 3, 1876, in Tennessee.

Then in 1876 as noted above, they moved to Batson Township, Johnson County, Arkansas, then to Grant County, which is just west of Pine Bluff, and a few years later they moved to their final hometown, Pine Bluff proper. Daughter, Susan Malinda Hogan, was born on August 30, 1878, in Pine Bluff; then came son, Edgar Hogan, born on May 19, 1881, in Pine Bluff; then daughter, Jennie Hogan, was born on August 29, 1883, in Pine Bluff; then daughter, Ada Marie Hogan, was born August 18, 1885, in Pine Bluff; and, the last child born to Christopher and Eliza Hogan was a son, Elmer Ellsworth Hogan, born on October 18, 1887, in Sheridan, Arkansas. Eight of their children would survive to adulthood. Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper accounts mention the four Hogan sons as being in the construction contracting business together.

Census records reflect Christopher’s occupation as that of farmer from his middle years well into his 60s. He and Eliza lived in several Pine Bluff homes over the years, including 2207 West 11th Avenue, 529 East 6th Avenue, and 25th & Oak Avenue, which census records show as their having owned free and clear of encumbrances.

Christopher died June 7, 1914, at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, after what news reports reflect as having been a three-year-long illness. His death certificate listed his cause of death as senility. He is interred at Bellwood Cemetery in Lot 98 in Pine Bluff, next to his beloved wife, Eliza, who died December 29, 1920, in Pine Bluff.

It is hoped much more detail and meaningful texture may be added to Christopher Hogan’s life-story than appear here. Please do contact me with any corrections, additions or changes you would like to bring forward. I would like to thank Judy Hillman, descended from Christopher’s eldest surviving son, Abner Hogan, for her key information about Christopher. Thank you very much. Martin Hall. 541.954.3113. mshft1111@gmail.com 1810 Tabor Street, Eugene, OR 97401. I am related to Christopher Hogan through his son, Edgar, through Edgar’s daughter, Edna Louise, who was my mother.