Hough, David L.

Born: 1819-XX-XX Middlebury, Vermont

Died: 1890-05-19 Illinois

Flourished: 1848 to 1873 La Salle County, Illinois

David L. Hough, attorney and canal official, attended Middlebury College in his native Vermont. Following his graduation in 1839, he taught school in Alabama for several years while reading law. Hough qualified at the bar in 1842 and commenced a legal practice that same year in Quincy, Illinois. Six years later he settled in La Salle County, where he worked as manager and collector of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Hough continued to work for the canal until 1868, when he returned to the legal profession. At the time of the 1860 census, he owned real estate valued at $30,000, and possessed $1,000 in personal property. Hough, an abolitionist, ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois House of Representatives in 1850. He identified as a Free Democrat, then became a Republican upon the organization of the party, and represented La Salle County at the 1856 Illinois Anti-Nebraska Convention and at the 1860 Illinois Republican Convention. On the advent of the Civil War, he supported union. Hough registered for the draft in the Sixth Congressional District but did not serve in the war. He married Elizabeth (Eliza) Martin and was survived by three sons at the time of his death in Hinsdale, Illinois.

The Undergraduate 16 (December 1890), 38-39; The Ottawa Free Trader (IL), 12 May 1848, 2:3; 16 November 1850, 3:1-2; 24 May 1890, 3:3; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), La Salle County, IL, 220; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 218; Victor B. Howard, “The Illinois Republican Party: Part I: A Party Organizer for the Republicans in 1854,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 64 (Summer 1971): 137, 139; The Alton Weekly Courier (IL), 5 June 1856, 2:1; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), La Salle, La Salle County, IL, 509; Wayne C. Temple, “Delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention in 1860,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 92 (Autumn 1999), 294; U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2010); The Chicago Tribune (IL), 22 May 1890, 3:5.