My Genealogy Hound

EUGENE K. HOUGH has passed through many shifting scenes on the stage of life, and has imprinted on the plates invented by Daguerre, and by those later who have improved on his process, the counterfeit presentments of the representatives of many nations. He was born at Potsdam, St. Lawrence county, New York, December 24, 1834, and is a son of E. A. and Susan (Pierce) Hough. E. A. Hough was a native of Connecticut, a builder and contractor by occupation, and served as a volunteer in the war of 1812. He was married in 1829 to Susan Pierce, who was a native of Vermont and a cousin to Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president of the United States. They had seven children, of whom E. K. was the oldest but one, who died in infancy.

Eugene K. Hough was reared in St. Lawrence county, and was educated in the academy of Potsdam and the High school of Lockport, this State. He left school at the age of seventeen to learn the then newly-discovered art of daguerreotyping, which he practiced for some years successfully in the villages of Canton and Malone, county-seats of St. Lawrence and Franklin counties. When twenty-three years of age, partly to oblige his cousin, S. E. Buttolph, and partly to see more of the world, he exchanged his Malone gallery for a travelling daguerreotype car, in which his cousin had traveled from St. Lawrence county to Brocton, in Chautauqua county. Mr. Hough operated but a short time in this county before he sold the car to accept a situation offered him in a house for the supply of daguerreotype and ambrotype materials, established in New York city. In 1859 he was sent by the house to Petersburg, Va., and thence to South Carolina, where he was during the exciting time of John Brown’s raid and Lincoln’s canvass. Realizing the gravity of the coming trouble, he returned north, reaching New York the day after Lincoln’s election. He remained in New York city during the war, accepting a situation as photographic operator with Meade Bros, on Broadway, and afterward with R. A. Lewis, who had galleries at Chatham square, and at 19th Street and Broadway. In 1865, still desiring to see more of the world, he went to Barbadoes, in the West Indies, for a winter, and found his business so profitable in the tropics and life so pleasant that he visited, with his photographic art, some of the largest cities in South America, remaining a year in Pernambuco, afterward visiting Bahia and Rio Janeiro, the capital of Brazil. In 1869 he returned to the United States, and opened a gallery in New York city.

In 1870 he was married to Frances Mason, of Ripley, this county. Then, for more than ten years, he maintained a successful business of his own amid the intense competition of New York city, meanwhile continuing his art studies in the Academy of Design, and being a regular paid correspondent of the photographic magazines. The winter of 1879 he left his gallery in New York in charge of his brother and went to Trinidad, in the English West Indies, with his wife, mainly for her health, she having been ill several winters with severe neuralgia, complicated with heart trouble, and her physician advised a milder climate. They went to Trinidad because they had friends there. Shortly after their arrival the two sons of the Prince of Wales stopped there on their voyage around the world. The governor of the island honored Mr. Hough with an invitation to photograph the princes amid the tropical foliage surrounding the governor’s palace. This proved an excellent advertisement; hundreds of their pictures were sold among the loyal population, and a profitable business immediately flowed in upon him. The business continued so good, and his wife’s health so improved, that in 1881 his brother sold the gallery in New York and joined him, with the intention of remaining until they made a fortune, as they had every prospect of doing; when suddenly in the height of their prosperity, a severe epidemic of yellow fever struck the island; there had not been one before for nearly twenty years, and the Hough brothers and their families barely escaped with their lives, while hundreds were dying around them. At one time they were given up to die, but finally recovered to find their business ruined for the time, and their health so impaired that they were compelled to return to the States. In 1883, shortly after his return, Mr. Hough purchased forty acres of grape land in Ripley, and placed it in care of his wife’s brother, George Mason, to plant a vineyard, the Chautauqua grape interest having then just begun.

When he bought the grape farm it was Mr. Hough’s intention to continue his business south in winter and only visit the farm in summer. On that plan he spent a winter in New Orleans in charge of an exhibit at the world’s fair, and two winters in North Carolina, where his business was profitable and his wife’s health seemed to improve. But she decided that she would rather live a few years less among friends and kindred than to be always among strangers; and his main endeavor being to place her in a condition most conducive to her health and happiness, he bought a house in Fredonia next to her sister’s, and was just fitting it up as a quiet home, when his wife was taken worse and died of heart failure in May, 1887. Shortly after her brother, George Mason, died with bilious inflammation, thus leaving two broken homes, with the incomplete vineyard, in Mr. Hough’s care.

In November, 1889, to continue their strong ties of family affection and unite their broken homes, Mrs. Fannie Mason, the widow, and Mr. Hough were married, and now reside in the Fredonia home.

The vineyard now has twenty acres of bearing vines under good management, and promises to be a profitable investment. He also has a photograph gallery in Fredonia, which keeps him pleasantly occupied in line with his life work. Mr. Hough is a quiet, unassuming gentleman, with no tendency to ostentation or display, and while he sometimes entertains his friends with descriptions of the countries he has visited, his residence so many years in the active centres of life and business, has satisfied his desire for bustle and excitement, and he now has settled down, like Goldsmith’s traveler returning home, his remaining years “in ease and rest to spend.” He has chosen this Chautauqua grape region as having more that is pleasant and less that is disagreeable for a permanent residence than any part of the world he has visited.