William B. Hogg Collection

William B. Hogg (1880-1937), who sometimes wrote under the name Josiah Hopkins, was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi on October 27, 1880 to H.H. Hogg, a confederate soldier and his wife Fannie Bennett, a confederate nurse.

He began his working career as the fireman on a locomotive on the Illinois Central Railroad. He began preaching at the age of 25, serving the Circuit around Vicksburg from 1905 to 1906. In 1905 he married Miss Virgie Marshall of Brookhaven, Mississippi. His first pastorate was at the country church in Ashland City, Tennessee where he served from 1907 to 1911 while attending Vanderbilt University, in the Theological department. From 1911 to 1917 he served four other Methodist churches in Mississippi, until World War I during which he served as an Army Chaplain with the 87th Division. After the war he ministered as a lecturer and evangelist for the Southern Methodist Church. From 1931 to 1933 he was associated with the ministry of Paul Rader at the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle where he offered a radio program called the Breakfast Brigade.

In 1933, while ministering with the Paul Rader organization in Los Angeles, he felt called to establish a "country church" in the middle of Hollywood. He modeled it on the country church in Ashland, his first pastorate, calling it the little Country Church of Hollywood, on Goose Creek. He hoped that his broadcast would appeal to those longing for a return to the "quiet, child-like faith" of the country churches of their youth, and it did. His Goose Creek quartet, with Rudy Atwood of the Old Fashioned Revival Hour at the piano, was an important part of his radio program and in popular demand for performances in local churches.