Mr. Hough, who takes rank as one of the oldest pioneers of Grant County, was born at Lebanon, N. H., that old Granite State whose noble sons are to be found in every portion of the Union. He received a fair education, and, at an early age, entered the counting-room of Benjamin Dodd & Co., of Boston, at that day large merchants and extensive ship-owners. At the age of eighteen, young Hough was sent out as supercargo of one of the vessels belonging to the firm. At the age of twenty-four, he was a Master, and, in this capacity, followed the sea for two years, when he went to Washington and engaged in mercantile pursuits, which he followed with success for two years longer, when a fire not only burned up all he had, but left him many thousand dollars in debt. During his residence in Washington, he had succeeded in making friends of many of the leading statesmen of the day, among them, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, Van Buren and Gen. Jackson. After the fire, he immediately took his family, consisting of his young wife and son, and came to St. Louis. The contracts for supplying the military posts on the Upper Mississippi being then advertised, he put in bids and secured most of them for the posts of Fort Armstrong, Rock Island; Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien; and Fort Snelling, then just being built. Steamboating was then a new business on the Upper Mississippi. Mr. Hough, however, chartered the steamer Rover, a boat of eighty or ninety tons measurement, but considered a first-class boat for that day, and, with a couple of barges, transported the supplies to these forts, taking back lead from Galena. In a few months he found himself out of debt, and with sufficient cash to again start in business, which he did in St. Louis. He remained in that city until the year 1827, when, in company with other gentlemen, he came up the river to Galena in a pirogue, and afterward started a smelting furnace at a place he named Gibralter, on the Platte, and set men at work clearing away the ground preparatory to the erection of a saw-mill, which he built in 1828-29; the first mill, probably, ever built by private persons in the present State of Wisconsin. The same year, a post office was established at and known as Gibralter, it being the only one between Galena and Prairie du Chien for many years. In 1832, Mr. Hough took part in the Black Hawk war, and was at the battle of Bad Ax. He continued in the smelting business until 1834, when he closed up this branch of his undertakings, and moved his family to his mill where he resided until 1845, the year before his death, when he removed to Potosi, where he died in 1846.
     Mr. Hough was a man of more than ordinary intelligence. He had a passion for books, was a close student, and became a fine scholar. He was a man of medium stature but of commanding presence, and his opinions were always listened to with respect. In business, he was a straightforward, open man. He had little patience with what are generally known as sharp traders, and abominated a falsehood. Politically, he was a Whig, and, like most Whigs of the day, became almost sick when he heard, through the old-fashioned, slow mail-coach, that Pennsylvania had gone against Mr. Clay, and that James K. Polk was elected to the Presidency. Mr. Hough was a man of strong opinions, but of generous and charitable impulses; a man of remarkable polish, and easy, graceful manners, he held fast to his own opinions while treating those of others with respect, and held his friends with hooks of steel. Among the latter was Gov. Duane Doty.
     During the years that Mr. Hough resided at his mill, he became an extensive hog and cattle breeder, and much of the fine stock in Southwestern Wisconsin can still be traced to his herds. He also was a careful student of the leading agricultural journals, and sent for seeds, and experimented with them, and thus introduced those most desirable in the country. He was among the first to introduce and successfully cultivate the Bowles' dent corn. At that day corn-raising in Grant County was looked upon as more uncertain than it is at present in Minnesota. When Mr. Hough came West, Dubuque, as a promising town, was unknown; to-day, his remains rest quietly in the elegant cemetery at that city.

This biography generously submitted by Roxanne Munns.