A Hat with a Story at Hattie and Nans Antiques and Rare Books
Roxy first entered public attention through her 1908 marriage to Jess Smith, a fellow Washington Court House native. Although the marriage lasted less than two years, the two remained close. Smith’s lifelong friend, Harry Daugherty, was appointed U.S. Attorney General by President Warren G. Harding in 1921. Through Daugherty, Smith became connected to political circles that would soon be engulfed in what became known as the Teapot Dome scandal, a sweeping federal corruption case involving secret oil leases and bribery that dominated headlines throughout the 1920s.
When Senate hearings began in 1924, Roxy was called as the first witness. Newspapers across the country commented on her striking presence, six feet tall, red-haired, and composed, but it was her testimony that made her briefly famous. For five days, she recounted what her former husband had shared with her about events inside the Harding administration. One reporter wrote that her speech “burst upon the country like a Fourth of July rocket.” Literary scholars have even noted similarities between her testimony and a scene in Ernest Hemingway’s short story Fifty Grand.
The scandal turned darker in 1923 when Jess Smith was found shot to death in his Washington hotel room. His death was ruled a suicide, though Roxy maintained for the rest of her life that he had been murdered to silence him, a belief echoed by many at the time.
After the hearings, Roxy returned to Ohio and lived a quiet life until her death in 1973. She never wrote a memoir. Instead, pieces of her story survive through family memory and through objects like this hat.
In Central City, we often talk about how antiques carry stories. This one carries testimony, headlines, unanswered questions, and a connection to Huntington itself. Sometimes history doesn’t feel distant at all. Sometimes, it’s resting quietly on a stand in a neighborhood shop.
