Hough, John N. (John Newbold), 1906-

Alfred Lacey Hough (1824-1908) was born into the Southern New Jersey, Quaker, landed gentry on April 23, 1826. After beginning his business life as an apothecary clerk, Alfred Hough became a commission agent in a paper-manufacturing house in which he soon became a partner. In 1853, for social and business reasons, he joined the artillery corps of the Washington Grays, a Pennsylvania home militia organization. The move foreshadowed a loss of his Quaker faith. He married Mary Jane Merrill, of Presbyterian, New England background, in 1857. The Panic of 1857 wiped out the Parrish and Hough paper firm, requiring Alfred Hough to work for a lumber, coal, and iron speculator, Mr. Jackson.(1)

Alfred and Mary Hough shared a distaste for slavery and secession, along with a firm belief in the Union. Hough, a Whig, had for several years predicted that the slavery question would only be settled by war, earning him the name “Crazy Hough” among those who knew him in Philadelphia. On April 18, 1861, Hough went with the Washington Grays into the 17th Pennsylvania Volunteers, but was discharged from that regiment to allow him to take a regular commission as Captain in the 19th U.S. Infantry later that spring. As a member of that regiment, Captain Hough served in the Army of the Cumberland in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia from immediately after Shiloh, in April of 1862, through the Battles of Chickamauga and Nashville.

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