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.