GEORGE HOGG

Born at Cramlington

Northumberland County,

England June 22, 1784

Immigrated to the US

September 1804

And Died in Allegheny

City, December 5, 1849

MARTHA HOGG

Daughter of Nathaniel Breeding and Mary Ann Ewing Breeding

Born September 4, 1787

Fayette County, Pennsylvania

According to Images of America: Allegheny Cemetery by Lisa Speranza and Nancy Foley page 28, Arcadia Publishing 2016, Charleston, South Carolina, “George Hogg was born in England in 1784 and came to the United States in 1804.  He was known in Pittsburgh for having developed the Brownsville Glass Factory and later as founder of the Monongahela Navigation Company in 1836.”

The monument marking the graves of George Hogg and his wife, Martha, was created by famed sculptor, Henry Kirke Brown.  Though the angel has become known as the “Hogg Angel”, the artist named it the “Angel of the Resurrection”.  Fittingly, the angel, resting on a sandstone pedestal, is depicted with one hand reaching toward the heavens and one toward Earth, to signify to the “creator that a Christian soul rests here, among the tree-lined paths at Allegheny.”

Henry Kirke Brown (1814-1886) was in high demand for his work creating statues of some of the most famous Americans in our history, including equestrian statues of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and General Winfield Scott.  Three of his works—statues of Nathanael Greene, George Clinton, and Philip Kearny—are in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol.

Another of his works that can be found in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, is a bronze statue of New York Governor De Witt Clinton.  According to the Smithsonian American Art Museums Art Inventories Catalog, created a “Standing portrait of DeWitt Clinton in suit with Classical drape over left shoulder and around waist. His proper left arm is bent at the elbow, hand resting on hip and covered completely by the drape. His right arm hangs straight down, his hand resting atop a stack of books.”

Two pieces of great art found in an open-air museum—also known as a cemetery.