One of the most notorious men ever found in the oil region during the 1860s and 1870s, Ben Hogan is an icon of those early wild days of the oil excitement: a pugilist, gambler, robber, sailor, blockade runner during the Civil War, a spy for both the Union and Confederate sides, a bounty jumper, bartender, confidence man, brothel owner, and scam artist among other distasteful attributes.
He was known in the oil towns of Titusville, Babylon, Pithole, Petroleum Center, and finally Tarport itself where in 1877-1878 he ran “Hogan’s Ranch” along the Tuna Creek, located just off present-day North Kendall Avenue.
He was “the king of illicit liquor traffic, the prince of white slavers, a bold, bad man in almost every way.” Hogan himself proudly titled his autobiography “The Wickedest Man in the World” but polite reporters called him “The Gentleman from Hell.” The Bradford Era, which mounted a tirade against his wicked ways during his stay in Tarport, simply called him “The Thing.”
Hogan, whose real name was Benedict Hagan, was born in 1841 in Wurttemberg, Germany. The family immigrated to New York City in 1852 and lived on the lower east side of Manhattan. Upon arrival in the city, his father had been scammed out of all his hard-saved money by a NYC shyster; Ben and another boy decided to get back the money and beat the man to death with a satchel filled with bricks, taking a key from the man’s pocket and sneaking into his store, where Ben retrieved his father’s money. It was the beginning of a life of violence, immorality, and crime.
The family soon moved to Syracuse, N.Y., where he began robbing wealthy houses. He also spent time in reform school, and at age 15 he ran away and got a job as a cabin boy on a schooner. Two years later, on shore leave, Ben happened to wander into a boxing gymnasium. The sport fascinated him. Hogan immediately took up boxing and became well known as a skilled pugilist using this skill throughout his life to impress women and intimidate his adversaries.
His strength was legendary.
The December 1917 issue of Oil and Gas Man’s Magazine wrote: “Hogan was the strongest man who ever appeared in the oil country. He could tie a rope of given thickness to his little finger, and extending his arm, lift up from the floor two big men, clinging to that rope. He was about five feet, nine inches in height, and magnificently built, exceedingly broad in the shoulders, long in the arms, and well placed upon his feet. He tapered from the neck to the feet and was quick in movement and graceful.”
In February of 1866 he advertised himself as “Professor Hagan, the German Hercules” and invited paying spectators to witness him lying on stage with an 800-pound stone placed on his chest, which was then broken with a sledgehammer by his assistant.
It was also around this time that Ben changed his name from Hagan to Hogan, and although he spoke with a slight German accent, he encouraged everyone to think of him as Irish, a fighting Irishman no doubt.
His autobiography, “The Life and Adventures of Ben Hogan, the Wickedest Man in the World” published in 1878, was written with a ghost writer, George Francis Trainer (Ben could neither read nor write) and is filled with dozens of stories, many of them with the truth stretched like a rubber band. Ben Hogan, who provided all the information, was not shy when it came to self-promotion.
The stories in the book are sensational, but possibly — probably — exaggerated. Trainer even apologizes at the beginning of the book, saying that “the writer himself is loath to lay claim to any of the brilliant wit or delicacy in the choice of subjects found in this book. The honor of these belongs exclusively to Mr. Hogan.”
Hogan said that he had been arrested for murder in New Orleans but when offered enlistment in the Confederate Army or jail he picked the army, only to desert almost immediately. He said he killed three men for cheating in a poker game in Alabama. He said he was a spy for both the Union and Confederates, served aboard a blockade runner ship, and was arrested by the government for various crimes, only to be pardoned by Abraham Lincoln. He said a lot of things, and they all made good copy for his book.
He came north after the Civil War and settled in Pithole, northeast of Oil City. Oil had been discovered there in 1865, and for the next 10 years or so, was one of the wildest oil boom towns in history. Hogan’s book recalls “Pithole, at the time, was the wickedest place on the globe. The roughest and most desperate classes had centered there. Pistols and bowie-knives were the ordinary adornments worn by nearly everybody. It was no unusual occurrence for half a dozen men to be killed in a day, and if twenty-four hours did happen to pass without somebody’s being shot, it set the inhabitants of the town to wondering what the matter was.” Ben Hogan fit right in.
His most famous venue, however, was the Floating Palace on the Allegheny River. Due to some previous trouble, and under an agreement with the local judge, Hogan had agreed to restrain from operating a sporting house and saloon in the town of Parker’s Landing. But the Allegheny River was wide open, and Ben soon realized that a floating ‘free-and-easy’ on the river would keep him within the letter of the law and still allow him to operate his type of business. The boat was named the “Floating Palace” and drifted between the counties of Armstrong and Allegheny. Whenever officials from either county decided to raid “the Palace,” Hogan would simply float it across the river out of their jurisdiction.
Small boats would ferry patrons out to the Palace, a brightly lit saloon, filled with pretty women, music, liquor, cigars, and gambling. One of the highlights was at sunset, when the girls bathed in the altogether in the river; inviting anyone who wanted to join them. And it was lucrative. By the time the boat sank on a trip down to Pittsburgh, Hogan had earned $210,000. Which he promptly gambled away.
In 1877 Ben purchased a small building on Railroad street in Tarport on the outskirts of Bradford for a dance hall “and at once enlarged it by additions on the back and sides, making a commodious resort. The lower story was chiefly devoted to a large hall, about sixteen feet in width and fifty in length. Nightly dances were held in this hall, where depraved women mingled with dissolute men of all stations. The bar drove a roaring trade, and this, with other sources of revenue, swelled the evening’s receipts.” This establishment bore the imposing title “Paris Palais Varieties” and soon became a target of local newspapers who raged against the immorality of the business and the presence of Ben Hogan.
On January 30, 1878, a headline in the Bradford Era reported “How Long, O Lord! Another Chapter of Revolting Crime Perpetrated at Ben Hogan’s Hell Hole.” The story concerned a fifteen-year-old girl, little Alice Tinglepan, who was a victim of white slavery in Hogan’s “devil’s den.” The Era, which pointed out every lurid detail, pleaded “have the people no power to relieve themselves from this vampire? Ben Hogan is unfit to live among civilized people and should be driven out of the land.”
The Era kept up the pressure, railing against the prostitution, gambling, drinking, and depravity of Hogan’s establishment and it worked; Hogan left town that February having made $10,000. He headed to New York City, and in March of 1878 the “the Palace” was sold at a Sheriff’s sale. On April 26, 1878, the building burned down.
But what makes Ben Hogan so remarkable is that he completely changed his evil ways in 1880 when he found religion and, denouncing his past life as wicked and immoral, devoted himself to Christianity and became an evangelical preacher. He was 37 years old.
No one believed it of course; how could a man as wicked as Ben Hogan find Jesus? But apparently it was true – Hogan went on the lecture circuit speaking about his past life and urging men to change their ways and for the next 36 years led a life of decency, honesty, and clean living. And if he recognized men in the audience as former customers, he didn’t mention it.
It was said “Hogan was a man apparently of two natures. There was something good about him and something strangely bad – that is, if the word “bad” can be differentiated from the idea of vileness, brutality, and innate wickedness. He was a curiosity all through – an enigma.”
Eventually, he ended up in Chicago, where for many years he ran Hogan’s Flop House where the homeless could obtain a bed for the night for 2 cents. It was said he never turned away a penniless man. Ben Hogan died on November 1, 1916 at the age of 76. His estate was valued at $38,000 – over a million dollars in today’s money.
