William Washington Hughes

1852 - 1943

Jeanne Bond-Esser, 2012

William Washington "Wash" Hughes (1852 – 1943)

Hulet & Mary Isgrigg Hughes -- Washington and Crawford Counties, Missouri

William Washington "Wash" Hughes was born August 24, 1852, seventh and second youngest child of Hulet

Hughes and his wife, ne Mary "Polly" Isgrigg in Johnson Township, Washington County, Missouri.

The 1850 Federal Census shows Hulet and Mary Hughes

enumerated there on October 29th. With them are their

children John (age 7), Margaret (5), Savilla (4), and Sarah

(2). Not included (the official date of the census being June

1) is infant Mary Amanda, born October 7. Wash would be

born two years later, and Nancy four years after that.

Wash was born into a sparsely populated rural township

close to the county line along the Meramec River. Fewer

than 500 people lived in the 130 square mile area in 1850,

representing 75 families (but fewer than 60 different

surnames), including Isgriggs, Harmans, and Kimberlins.

Wash's father Hulet died before Wash was six, so he may not have remembered much about him. His

mother remarried in 1858 to Judge John Taylor Hyde, a widower of substance in the community, and Mary

and her children moved a few miles west across the Meramec River and county line to the Hyde home near

Harrisons Mill in Boone Township, Crawford County, just south of what would become the town of Sullivan.

According to family stories recounted by Wash, Judge Hyde had been a friend of Hulet Hughes. By the time

Hulet died, Judge Hyde had lost his eyesight, but he remembered Polly as beautiful. Polly was 31 and Judge

Hyde 55 when they married. Judge Hyde already had nine children by his late wife, ne Mary Pinnell; Polly

and Judge Hyde had six more children. Together, Wash had seven siblings, nine step-siblings, and six half-

siblings.

Crawford County was rolling farmland marked by fertile bottomlands along the Meramec River. During

Wash's youth, a frenzy of railroad building pushed into the county, connecting the rural landscape to St.

Louis and its shipping routes. Most of the early MIssouri settlers had come from the Upper South and were

pro-slavery, though few were slave-holders. (In 1860, out of a total county population of 5,826, there were

only 188 black people). Many of the newer arrivals from the North and Europe found slavery abhorrent –

and so was set up within the state the national divisions leading up to the Civil War.

Early in 1861 as the war began, popular sentiment was in favor of "armed neutrality" and remaining in the

Union as a slave-holding state. However, that policy was futile, and the region ended up sending men and

supplies to both sides – and suffering raids and battles from both sides – over the course of the war. After

the war, the railroads were rebuilt, bringing new prosperity to growing towns. Along the Meramec River

bottoms, though, the farmers did not seem to participate in that.

We know from a letter written by Wash's brother-in-law Charles Wright to his cousin in Oregon in March

1871 from "Merrymac" River, Crawford County, that "times has been very hard here in this country ever

since the war ceased," and he himself was considering a move "to your country or Cal. this spring, providing

I can sell out my land."

William Washington & Julia Frances Harmon Hughes -- Starting a Family in Missouri

On January 9, 1876, Wash married Julia Frances Harman, daughter of neighbors Reuben Harman and

Vernetta Kimberlin Harman, near Anthonie's Mill, Missouri. Son Arthur and daughter Mary Vernetta were

born in Missouri in 1876 and 1878.

Move to Montague County, Texas, and back to Missouri – A Growing Family

Two themes are evident in the stories of those who picked up their families and migrated in the 19th

Century: The "westering" movement and the web of family connections that draw folks toward those

population edges.

After Mary was born, Wash moved the family to Texas, where she died. On June 11, 1880, the family, with

newborn son Walter, was enumerated in the Federal Census in Montague County, Texas. The census was to

include family members who had passed away between June 1, 1880 and the day the census was taken, and

little Mary's initials "M.V." are included with the family, though merged erroneously with son Walter's

information.

Montague County, Texas, lies along the Red River north of Fort Worth and is about 25 miles across and 35

miles north/south, 937 square miles in total. It appears that Wash and brother-in-law Lonnie Parr were part

of large wave of farmers relocating into north-central Texas.

Bands of Comanche and Wichita Indians continued to harass the county until the mid-1870s. As a result of these raids, in 1870 only 890 residents had settled in the county. During the first few years of the 1870s, however, an organized effort successfully drove the Indians from the county, allowing the governor in 1878 to pronounce that Montague County was no longer a frontier county. As the number of Indian raids decreased, the number of settlers increased. By the early 1880s the population was 11,000. Texas State Historical Association

The Red River valley area was grazing land, and Wash was no doubt a tenant farmer, as were half the

farmers in Texas by the end of the nineteenth century. According to family lore, Wash raised "Spanish

mules" in Texas and sold them to the Army. According to daughter Ada Seely, Wash's family stayed in Texas

seven years.

What brought Wash and his new family to Texas? It may have been that he

followed sister Nancy "Nannie" Hughes Parr and her husband Lorenzo

"Lonnie" there. Lonnie's family had lived in Grayson County, Texas, (also

along the Red River) through the Civil War years, before moving to the

Meramec Valley in Missouri where Lonnie married Nannie in 1875. By June of

1880 both Wash's family and Lonnie's were living in Montague County, Texas.

Another daughter (Effie) was born there before they returned to the family

area in Missouri in 1884, where a third son (Bascom) was born. The

remainder of their children (William, 1886; Sadie, 1889; Mamie, 1892; Ada

1893; Everett, 1897; Gladys, 1899) were born near Sullivan, Missouri.

Covered Wagon Trip to Eastern Minnesota

On April 1, 1900, the family set out from Missouri on a cross-country migration again to join Wash's half-

brother, Thomas Jefferson "Jeff" Hyde in Minnesota. Ada Hughes Seely described the journey in "Covered

Wagon Trek to Minnesota" (December 1973):

"As the younger generation seem more interested in the covered wagon trek to Minnesota, I will try to describe it as the memory of a six and seven year old can recall it. There were two white canvas covered wagons and a small tent. Papa drove the sorrel team, Dick and Deck (Dexter) to one wagon. Bascom, a lad of fifteen, drove the blacks, Prince and Rock (Roxy) to the other.

Arthur was in the Indian Territory where Walter joined him and they went to the harvest fields in Kansas.

We left home April 1, 1900, after bidding good-bye to aunts and cousins grouped there. We had coaxed and been allowed to take a pair of bantam chickens in a coop tied to the rear of the wagon. But on entering a town, their crowing became so vociferous, it couldn't be smothered by blankets flung over them. About the second day the door of the coop became unfastened and they escaped, to our sorrow and the older ones' relief. We also had a small, short-haired, white and yellow dog named Snip. We couldn't leave him. So he trotted bravely behind the wagon from Missouri to Minnesota, except when impending dog fights became too frequent. Then the boys would put him in the wagon for a time. Effie whose 18th birthday was Mar. 30, mapped out the route, supervised the camp, washed, combed and kept in order the children. A favorite pastime was to memorize towns we passed through: Sullivan, Drake, Swiss, Challott [Charlotte]. We crossed the wide muddy Missouri river, by ferry, at Hermann Mo., a frightening experience for both horses and children.

We were delayed somewhere in Mo. by terrific rain. We bought a small camp stove and had to stay in the tent. We waded in water. In Iowa we took shelter from a snow storm for a day or two in a vacant house with a fascinating turnstile gate.

A six year old doesn't remember much about the food. I remember nibbling on small, hard maple sugar cakes and horehound sticks. And I remember potato soup with bacon and onions and its aroma.

We arrived at the home of J. D. Hyde (Uncle Jeff) near Rock Creek, Minn. the first of May 1900 having made the trip in a month's time.

We kept the same horses and "Old Snip" the ten years we were in Minnesota.

We had to let them go when we came to Oregon. The horses were sold and a friend put to death Old Snip."

A month later in Minnesota on June 21, 1900, Julia and Wash's family (minus Art and Walt) were

enumerated in the Federal Census living near Jeff Hyde in Rock Creek Township in Pine County (about five

miles north of present day Rush City).

In about March 1905 the family (Wash, Julia, Bill, Sadie, Mamie, Ada, Everett, and Gladys) moved to Nessel

Township about 10 miles west of Rush City in Chisago County, Minnesota, where they are listed on June 7,

1905, in the Territorial Census of Minnesota. A 1908 photo in the Minnesota Historical Society collection

shows Wash on Rush City's Main Street atop a wagon full of potatoes pulled by Dick and Deck. The caption

on the photo proclaims (in a bit of town boosterism) "Potators 102 Bu – Hughes."

By that time, Art (29) had married in Missouri, then come to Minnesota as well, and was living with his wife

and young son in Rock Creek Township in Pine County, Minnesota. Effie (23) moved to Oregon in 1905,

perhaps to join Walt who probably moved to Oregon about this time, also. Though Bascomb (21) does not

show up in the 1905 Territorial Census, he may have been in Minnesota that year, as he is included there in

Wash's household in 1910.

The 1910 Census finds Wash's family farming in Rushseba Township in Chisago County, an area east of Rush

City about 50 miles north of Minneapolis along the St. Croix River. Bascom (25) and Bill (23) remain in the

William Washington Hughes

Dick and Deck and Gladys

household as farm labor. Mamie (17) also is in the household, as are Ada (16), Everett (12) and Gladys (11).

Ada Seely's history reveals that the family was preparing to relocate to Oregon that summer to join son Walt

who had been living in Clackamas County, Oregon, for several years and had married there a few years

earlier.

What had brought Walt to Oregon? Well, remember that letter that Wash's brother-in-law, Charles Wright,

had written to his cousin in 1871? The cousin, Joseph Hyde, was living in Clackamas County at the time, and

Charles and Aunt Mandy had, indeed, moved to California and then on to Oregon. Walt and cousin Perry

Wright (Charles and Mandy's son) had attended the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exhibition together. It is likely that

once again, family ties had brought Walt out to Oregon following either the Hydes or the Wrights.

On to Woodburn, Marion County, Oregon, to Settle At Last

In 1910 Wash took his family on their last cross-country migration – this time by train – and for the first

time, was able to farm land he owned, rather than as a tenant. In Oregon, Wash and Julia purchased a farm

in the fertile Willamette Valley along the bottomlands of Butte Creek off the Mt. Angel--Woodburn Highway

east of Woodburn in the Monitor area, where he

raised grain and vegetables and kept a dairy.

Son Bascom stayed behind in Minnesota and

married there in 1911, but by 1918 was also

farming in the Woodburn area.

The1920 Federal Census indicates that Mamie and

Gladys were still in the household with Wash and

Julia; Art and his family had come to Oregon from

Minnesota and lived nearby; Walt and his family

had moved from Clackamas to Marion County.

Gladys married Leonard Larson in 1921 and they moved to Pasco, Washington.

On February 21, 1927, Julia passed away. She is buried in the old section of the Belle Passi Cemetery, just

south of Woodburn.

Mamie married later that same year.

Gladys and Leonard moved back into the home to keep house for Wash and farm the place, and the 1930

census shows them living there with Wash. Grandchildren remember how he loved to tell stories – and had

hundreds of them – and how he loved socializing. Shirley and Lois recall how during harvest, someone

would bring Wash to their house to visit with the threshing crews as they came in shifts to eat their mid-day

dinner.

The 1940 Federal Census shows son Bill also living in the household with Gladys and Leonard, their 6-year-

old daughter Loris, and Wash, now 87.

William Washington Hughes remained in the home until his death on July 23, 1943, a month short of his

91st birthday. He is buried next to Julia in Belle Passi Cemetery.

Gladys Hughes Larson, Benjamin Franklin Harmon, William Washington Hughes abt 1920 with sugar beets

Everett, Ralph Seely, Art, Wash, Walt, Bill, Bascom Hughes

William Washington Hughes and sister Mary Amanda Hughes Wright

Four Generations: Bascom, Barry, Hugh, W. W. Hughes