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.

After the war ended, Brevet(2) Colonel Hough decided to stay in the U.S Army at the rank of Captain and was assigned to the Department of the Cumberland in Nashville. In 1866, he was reassigned to a headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. He was appointed as aide-de-camp to Major General George H. Thomas, proceeding with him to the Military Division of the Pacific in 1869, and he remained with General Thomas until the General’s death in March of 1870.

Captain Alfred Hough was then assigned to the 13th Infantry, in which he was to have a number of missions. He served at Camp Douglas, Utah, from 1870 to 1874. Promoted to Major in 1874 with the 22nd Infantry, Hough took assignments to Forts Brady and Mackinac in Michigan (1875-1876), participated in the campaign against the Sioux in the Yellowstone Valley (1876-1877), suppressed riots in Chicago (1877), was ordered with several companies to the Indian Territory to resist the encroachment of settlers (1879), and traveled with the his battalion of the 13th Infantry to Colorado against the Utes (1879-1880). In 1882, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and reassigned to the 16th Infantry in 1882. He was stationed with his regiment in Fort Davis, Fort Concho, Fort MacIntosh, San Antonio in Texas, and Fort Du Chesne, Utah Territory. He was promoted to Colonel and given command of the 9th Infantry at Whipple Barracks, Arizona. Colonel Alfred Lacey Hough retired on April 23, 1890, at the age of 64 after 29 years of active duty. In 1904, Colonel Hough, retired, was promoted to Brigadier General, retired.(3)

Throughout his service, he corresponded with his wife, Mary Jane Hough, describing the privations of warand the military situation. She, in turn, kept him apprised of the home front, the family news, and her attitudes and views. Alfred and Mary Jane shared a firm belief in the Union cause.(4)

Mary Jane (Merrill) Hough’s family had moved to Pennsylvania from Vermont. Her father, James Merrill, had become a prominent and respected attorney in New Berlin, Pennsylvania. Despite a prosperous upbringing, Mary Jane had experienced considerable grief during her childhood. Her mother died early, leaving two children-Mary, two, and Charles, one. Mary had experienced two stepmothers while growing up, but both had maintained a distance from her. At nineteen, Mary lost her father as well. Her Calvinist religious beliefs prepared her for emotional loss and trained her for the privations and sacrifices common to military spouses.(5)

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(1) See Robert G. Athearn, ed., Soldier in the West: the Civil War Letters of Alfred Lacey Hough, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957, pp. 17-29.

(2) Brevet ranks were temporary ranks given for proven gallantry, capability, or necessity in combat that elevated soldiers during wartime above their permanent ranks, to which they reverted in peace time. A large number of generals, colonels, and majors became lieutenant colonels, captains, lieutenants, and sergeants after the Civil War.

(3) For the official record of Alfred Lacey Hough, see William H. Powell, Powell’s Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, Philadelphia: L.R. Hamersly & Co., 1890, pp. 295-296; and Powell, List of Officers of the Army of the United States from 1779-1900, New York: L.R. Hamersly & Co., 1900, p. 381.

(4) See Athearn, Ibid., for an edition of A.L. Hough’s Civil War letters to his wife containing military and political matters. Neither Hough’s Civil War correspondence concerning family matters, his post Civil War correspondence to his wife, nor any of Mary Jane Hough’s correspondence to him, have received scholarly attention as of this writing.

(5) For more about Mary Hough and her correspondence with her husband, see Melanie Ormond Massengale, A Second Civil War: Northern Victorian Gender Ideology and the Correspondence of Alfred Lacey and Mary Merrill Hough, thesis (M.A.), University of Colorado, 2002.

From the guide to the Alfred Lacey Hough Papers, 1861-1924, 1869-1889, (University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Archives Dept.)