Hughes

gallant services earned him the rank of major
and later of colonel. After the capture of Mexico
City and pending the ratification of the peace
treaty, he was made governor of the province of
Jalapa. He proved a good governor, controlling
the banditti with an iron hand, but at the same
time entering into cordial relationship with the
leading clergy of the province. He was con-
vinced, however, that Mexico should be under
the control of the United States, and in course of
time, become virtually an outlying province (J.
H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 1919, I, 271,
II, 224, 230; letters from Hughes to Francis
Markoe during the war, in the Markoe Papers,
Library of Congress).

After the treaty of peace was signed Hughes
was engaged by W. H. Aspinwall and J. L. Ste-
phens [gg.z>.], promoters of a railroad across the
Isthmus of Panama, to take charge of a survey
to determine the best route, a work which was
completed under his guidance in 1849 (Tracy
Robinson, Panama, 1907, pp. 7-9 ; Report of the
Directors of the Panama Railroad to the Stock-
holders, 1849). The next year he resigned from
the army. In 1854 he was president of the Bal-
timore & Susquehanna Railroad, which in De-
cember merged into the Northern Central, and
in 1857 he was quartermaster general of Mary-
land (Twenty-seventh Report of the Bdtiwiore
and Susquehanna Railroad, 1854; James Win-
gate, The Maryland Register for 1857, p. 24).
His active life was honorably rounded out by a
term in Congress, 1859-61, during which he
presented his resolution calling for a department
of agriculture {Congressional Record, Feb. 9,
1860, 36 Cong., i Sess., p. 727), and made a
speech, Feb. 5, 1861, on the right of the South
to secede, which, without going into the political
philosophy of the matter, was entirely Southern
in cast of thought (Ibid., 36 Cong., 2 Sess., pp,
I47-51 )• After retiring from Congress, he lived
at Tulip Hill on the West River, near Annapolis,
the beautiful old estate of the Markoe family.
Here he spent his time as consulting engineer
and planter until his death. His wife was Ann
Sarah Maxey, daughter of Virgil Maxey (Swep-
son Earle, The Chesapeake Bay Country, 1923,
p. 180).

[Dates for birth and death are based on family rec-
ords ; some of Hugfces's reports of surveys are in the
Library of Congress; see also Ausburn Towner, Our
County and Its People : A Hist, of the Valley and Coun-
ty of Chemung (1892) ; F. B. Heitman, Biog. Reg. and
Diet. U. S. Army (1903) ; J. R- Kenly, Memoirs of a
Md. Volunteer: War with Mexico, in the Years 1846-
M (1873) ; Biog. ZXr. Am. Cong. (1928).]

HUGHES, HECTOR JAMES (Oct. 23, 1871-
Mar. i, 1930), civil engineer, was the son of

Hughes

James H. and Mary (Miller) Hughes. He was
born at Centralia, Pa., and attended the public
schools of Williamsport. Here, and by private
studies, he fitted for college and entered Harvard
in the fall of 1890. His studies during the suc-
ceeding four years were largely in the traditional
classical field, but he took courses in history and
economics, and in the last-named subject re-
ceived an honorable mention at his graduation
in June 1894. Immediately on receiving his de-
gree he entered the employ of the town engineer
of Brookline, Mass., and spent nearly four years
in the considerable variety of municipal and sani-
tary engineering work which such a post in-
volves. Feeling the need of more formal techni-
cal training in his chosen profession, in the fall
of 1897 he entered the Lawrence Scientific School
course in civil engineering, which he completed
in 1899. He then joined the engineering staff of
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in
Chicago as assistant engineer of maintenance,
later becoming resident engineer in charge of
construction in Iowa. Early in 1902 he left the
railroad and spent a few months as designer with
the American Bridge Company in Pittsburgh,
With this background of rugged and varied
practical experience he returned to Cambridge
in 1902 as instructor in hydraulics in Harvard
University. In 1914 he was made professor of
civil engineering at Harvard, which chair he
held until his death. From 1914 to 1918 he held
the same title also in the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology under the cooperative agree-
ment between those two engineering schools.
When this agreement terminated and the new
Harvard Engineering School was established,
Hughes became chairman of its Administrative
Board, and iti the following year (1920) he was
appointed dean* Thus, for the first eleven years
of the life of the school Hughes was its executive
and administrative head. He had already built
up with marked success the Harvard Engineer-
ing Camp at Squam Lake, of which he was di-
rector, and lie brought to the new deanship a
keen interest in the problems of engineering edu-
cation and noteworthy administrative ability.
He was not a popular teacher but he had tact and
skill to hold together a distinguished faculty, and
he made the school a widely recognized institu-
tion. His greatest contribution to the engineer-
ing profession was a quiet and constant insistence
on the highest professional standards of thought
and action and a broad interpretation of engineer-
ing training. The engineering school was an in-
tegral part of Harvard University, not merely a
technical establishment in a corner by itself, and
he wanted his students—without sacrificing

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