Dorothy Childs Hogner
A Prolific Writer: Children's, Travel, and Gardening
Anyone looking up information about Dorothy Childs Hogner will probably find the many books she wrote for children, plus some travel books before they find the three books she wrote about growing and cooking with herbs and the one book she wrote about good bugs and bad bugs in the garden.
She was a prolific writer, publishing books in every decade from the 1930s through the 1970s. Many of her children’s books were non-fiction books with a nature theme. But those three herb books put her on my list of Lost Ladies of Garden Writing
Her Biography
Using newspaper clippings, information about her husband, and ancestry.com, I pieced together a little about Dorothy Childs Hogner.
She was born July 16, 1904, in Manhattan but soon moved to Litchfield, Connecticut, where she lived for most of her life. According to the census records from 1920, her father was a doctor, and she was a middle child with a brother three years older and a brother who was five years younger.
In the 1930 census, Dorothy was a teacher at Spring Hill School in Litchfield, where she also lived with several other teachers.
She met her husband, Nils, on a trip to New Mexico in the early 1930s.
The picture above is of Dorothy and her husband Nils from the Albuquerque Tribune, August 1939, for an article that talks about their working partnership.
According to the article, Dorothy “studied at Wellesley and then went to New Mexico to write a children’s book on the Sante Fe Trail.” That’s where she met and married Nils, around 1932. Dorothy and Nils worked happily together until his death in 1970. They had no children, but Nils had a son with his first wife.
Dorothy died on June 6, 1989, in Litchfield.
The article about Nils and Dorothy also mentions how much they enjoyed traveling and camping in both the southwestern United States and Canada. About their camping, the author of the article wrote:
“On their trips, the Hogners camp out, disavowing even the minor comforts of tourists camps. They pack a battered tent in an even more battered car, and start out with high hopes. Neither is excitable, both are wonderfully resourceful, and they regard all contretemps only as for their art.”
When they weren’t traveling, Dorothy and Nils lived in Litchfield and had an herb farm called Hemlock Hill Herb Farm. (If you are interested, I found a copy of an Hemlock Hill Herb Farm Litchfield Connecticut Herb Plants Catalog 1971 for sale on AbeBooks. Plus, the Litchfield Historical Society has archived several catalogs from different years. But there are no catalogs viewable online.)
Sadly, I don’t think anyone thought to write an obituary for Dorothy when she died in 1989, at least I couldn’t find one. That seems odd, considering she was the author of over 50 books. She’s not even listed in Wellesley College’s top 100 alumni, which admittedly is quite the list, but I don’t know if she actually graduated or just attended. (I also found sources indicating she attended the University of New Mexico for awhile, which is where she met her husband, Nils.)
Her Non-Gardening Books
I’ve attempted to list Dorothy’s non-gardening books for no other reason than because I couldn’t find a complete list anywhere on the Internet. Now, the next person who looks will find what I think is a fairly complete list.
I found 36 books on bookfinder.com, looking for books by Dorothy that are for sale, plus one book from a newspaper advertisement, plus an additional four books on Google Books.
Then after I completed the list, I found an entry in WritersDirectory 1980-82 on Google Books, by searching for “Hemlock Hill Herb Farm,” which listed a few more books I didn’t have on my list.
The list of Dorothy’s non-gardening books now includes:
The Animal Book (1942)
Barnyard Family (1948)
The Bible Story (1944)
Birds of Prey (1969)
Blue Swamp (1947)
Butterflies (1952)
The Cat Family (1956)
Children of Mexico (New World Neighbors Series) (1942)
Conservation in America (1958)
Daisy: A Farm Fable (1949)
Don't Blame the Puffins (1940)
Earthworms (1952)
Endangered Plants (1970)
Farm Animals (1945)
Frogs and Polliwogs (1956)
Grasshoppers and Crickets (1960)
Horse Family (1953)
Lady Bird (1938)
Moths (1964)
Navajo Winter Nights, Folk Tales and Myths of the Navajo People (1935)
Odd Pets (1967)
Old Hank Weatherbee (1939)
Our American Horse (1944)
Pancho (1938)
Reward for Brownie (1944)
Rufus (1958)
Santa Fe Caravans: Our Changing World (1938)
Sea Mammals (1979)
Snails (1958)
Snowflake (1952)
South to Padre (1936)
Spiders (1955)
Stormy(1941)
Summer Roads to Gaspe (1939)
The Animal Book: American Mammals North of Mexico (1942)
The Dog Family (1954)
The Education of a Burro (1936)
The Wild Little Honker (1951)
Unexpected Journey: The Story Of A Dog (1943)
Water Beetles (1963)
Water Over the Dam (1960)
Water Plants (1977)
Weeds (1968)
Westward, High, Low, and Dry (1938)
Wide River (1954)
Winky: King of the Garden (1946)
Are you curious about Winky, King of the Garden, the last title on the list?
About Winky: King of the Garden (1946), Dorothy wrote, “Winky is a scarecrow but doesn’t know what a crow looks like. When a crow does appear, Winky is more terrified than the crow. With the help of a rabbit, squirrel, woodchuck, and mouse, Winky overcomes his fear and becomes king of the garden.”
Her Gardening Books
Dorothy’s gardening books, which she wrote later in her writing career, included:
Herbs from the Garden to the Table (1953)
A Fresh Herb Platter (1961)
Gardening & Cooking on Terrace and Patio (1964)
Good Bugs and Bad Bugs in Your Garden: Back-Yard Ecology (1974).
I have one of her books, A Fresh Herb Platter (1961), which, like many of her books, was illustrated by her husband.
The sub-title for the book is “for the epicurean who loves both the good earth and good food.” The book contains both growing instructions and recipes for using the herbs. Dorothy notes in the introduction that she considers it “sacrilege” when gardeners don’t cook the vegetables and herbs they grow but instead let others do that cooking.
Lingering Questions
It’s easy sometimes to take a wrong turn on the internet and find another “Dorothy Childs,” like the divorced woman with the same name who is shown as living in a “House Of Detention For Women” in New York City in 1940. That is NOT our Dorothy! I don’t think I took any wrong turns four our Dorothy.
You can also find confusing information, such as on the 1930 census record for Dorothy which has a “no” under “attended school” but then drilling down just a bit you find out that the “no” is for the question “attended school since Sept. 1, 1929.” And, while the census records are useful, they leave 10-year gaps in which a lot could happen, such as Dorothy going to college and graduating in the 1920s. I still wonder if she actually graduated from Wellesley or just attended.
I also wonder how she got to New Mexico in the early 1930s, where she met Nils. Where did the idea come from to travel to the southwest to write a book about the Santa Fe trail? What did her parents think of her doing that? How did she get there? Did she travel alone? Was it a summer adventure that turned into a lifelong adventure when she met Nils?
When did she take up gardening and decide to specialize in herbs?
Is there a pile of Dorothy’s letters somewhere with more clues? I think not, but you never know what might turn up. (One thing that did turn up in my searches was another possible lost lady of garden writing.). And I wonder what else I might find if I searched the Litchfield Historical Society’s archives.
Dorothy Childs Hogner included this quote on the title page of A Fresh Herbal Platter.
“Nor do I think Men will ever reach the End, and far extended Limits of the Vegetable Kingdom…”
John Evelyn, Acetaria, A Discourse of Sallets, London, 1699)
We may not reach the end of the limits of the vegetable kingdom, but we’ll reach the end of this article as we add Dorothy Childs Hogner to my growing list of Lost Ladies of Garden Writing.
(By the way, you can read John Evelyn’s Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets free as a Kindle book. What an amazing world we live in!)
She must have been a fascinating woman! I would love to hear about her camping trips.