John Hogan was born in Virginia in about 1740. He moved to Orange County, North Carolina by 1772, where he worked as either a clerk or justice of the peace for the local court. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, Hogan became a a colonel in the Orange County Regiment of the North Carolina Militia and later represented Orange County in the North Carolina State Senate in 1779. After the war, Hogan moved to Montgomery County, Tennessee, where he died in about 1810.