Father, later Bishop, John Joseph Hogan was born in Bruff, County Limerick, Ireland in 1829. He came to the U. S. in 1847, attended seminary in St. Louis, and became a Priest on April 10, 1852. By 1857, he established missions to Irish railroad workers and Catholic settlers in outstate Missouri in Chillicothe, Macon City, Brookfield, Mexico, and Cameron.
Father Hogan noted male Irish immigrants often could only obtain work as transient labor on the railroads. Young women became servants, frequently in urban areas. Hogan worried that young Irish immigrants were unable to marry and establish families as a result. Irish families needed a place they could obtain inexpensive land on which to settle and achieve stability.
The nearest source of a large area of cheap land was the Ozark Plateau. This land was not the best farmland, and much of it remained unsold into the 1850s. Congress acted to reduce the price of these undesirable lands by passing the Graduation Act of 1854. The act reduced the minimum cost of $1.25 per acre to $1 per acre if it had been unsold 10 years, and further reduced the price 25 cents per acre for each additional 5 years, to a minimum of 12.5 cents per acre after 30 years.
Father Hogan developed a plan for a settlement for Irish immigrants in the Ozarks in an area with this less costly land. He traveled there to scout land, entered land at the Jackson Land Office, and then returned to recruit settlers. The final site centered at the Oregon-Ripley County boundary, in a region where immigrants could purchase inexpensive land. Rev. James Fox donated a centrally located land parcel for a log church forty feet square and priest’s residence. Father Hogan returned in November 1858 to shepherd the colony. The settlement included forty families by 1859.
Father Hogan still had the missions in northern Missouri, principally the one in Chillicothe, and there were too few priests to allow him to devote all his time to the Ozark settlement. He had to return to Chillicothe in October 1859, never to return to the Ozarks.
The settlement disappeared in the wake of depredations by Union, Confederate, and outlaw groups during the Civil War. It is not a great mystery why the settlers disappeared from the area. Men either enlisted during the War in various military units or were impressed into them. Others found it impossible to make a living in all the chaos and became refugees, settling elsewhere after the War. Sale of abandoned land parcels for back taxes supports this. The core area became part of the Mark Twain National Forest by the 1950s and later designated as the Irish Wilderness.
Enhanced access to records in the last few years reveal some Irish residents stayed in the area—either returning after the War or taken in by others. A known example is the Griffin family. Patrick Griffin managed to hang on through the War, and his son Billy enlisted in the Confederate Army. Billy returned to his parents’ farm in 1865, relocated them to Ironton, and lived out his life on the land. He also donated part of this land for a church.
Father Hogan became a successful priest and was consecrated Bishop of St. Joseph and later the first Bishop of Kansas City. He died on February 21, 1913. A proponent of education, his name survives in his published memoirs, the history of the Church in Missouri, the name of two schools, and his tireless ministry.
