Hughes

HUGHES, HOWARD ROBARD (Sept. 9,
i869~JaiL 14,1924), inventor, manufacturer, was
the son of Felix Turner and Jean Amelia (Sum-
merlin) Hughes and was born in Lancaster, Mo.
He was descended on both sides of his family
from English land-grant colonists in Virginia,
the first Hughes having settled in Kent County
in 1645, and the first Summerlin in Isle of Wight
County in 1717. His father was a lawyer widely
known for his conduct of the Scotland County
Bond Cases, which extended over a period of
twenty-six years (1872-98), and was a railroad
president and judge. During his youth Hughes
lived in Lancaster, Mo., and Keokuk, Iowa,
where he attended school. He prepared for col-
lege at the military academies at Morgan Park,
III, and St. Charles, Mo., and entered Harvard
College with the class of 1897, taking a special
course, 1893-95. He then studied law at the
State University of Iowa, 1895-96, and without
graduating began practice with his father in
Keokuk. He had meanwhile become intensely
interested in mining, and he shortly left home to
engage in lead and zinc mining in southwestern
Missouri. He was happily at work here until, in
1901, the news reached him of the discovery of
oil at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Tex. Rushing
immediately to Beaumont, he quickly learned the
practical end of the oil game. He then estab-
lished a drilling contracting business and for
seven years, most of the time in partnership with
Walter Sharp, he engaged in contracting and in
drilling wells for himself, following the oil in-
dustry from one field to another both in Texas
and in Louisiana, and experiencing all of the
fortunes and misfortunes which that industry
affords. The common method of drilling an oil
well at that time was the rotary system, using a
chisel-faced cutting tool shaped like a fish tail
With such an outfit Hughes, about 1907, started
a well at Pierce Junction, Tex., which he had to
abandon because the drill could not penetrate the
hard rock. After a similar experience at Goose
Creek, Tex,, on the suggestion of his partner,
Sharp, he went to his parents* home in Keokuk
for a vacation, determined to devise a drill to
bore through hard rock formation. Succeeding
after two weeks' work, he filed patent applica-
tions on Nov. 20, 1908, and on Aug. 10, 1909,
was granted two United States patents (numbers
930,758 and 930,759) for rock drills. These are
the basic patents of the cone-type drill now used
throughout the world in rotary drilling systems.
Hughes first tested his newly invented bit at
Goose Creek, drilled through fourteen feet of the
hard rock in eleven hours, brought in a well, and
thus discovered the Goose Creek field, which be-

Hughes

came one of the greatest oil fields in the Gulf
Coast region. In like manner he discovered
Pierce Junction field, and then in 1909 organized
with his partner the Sharp-Hughes Tool Com-
pany in Houston, Tex., to manufacture his drill.
Overcoming innumerable difficulties in intro-
ducing the new implement, the partners eventu-
ally established a most successful business. Af-
ter Sharp's death in 1917 Hughes became sole
owner of the Hughes Tool Company, and not
only directed the activities of his constantly
growing enterprise, which now had branch plants
in Oklahoma City and Los Angeles, but also car-
ried on his inventive work. Following his initial
invention he patented twenty-five improvements
of his cone-type drill and other drilling equip-
ment, and had instituted experimental research
leading to the manufacture of a steel wedge-type
gate valve for high pressure service in the oil in-
dustry. Unfortunately he did not live to see this
device perfected. During the World War he
adapted his cone bit for horizontal boring be-
tween trenches and offered it to the federal gov-
ernment, but the war ended before any definite
action was taken in the matter. Hughes's phi-
lanthropies were many—he was particularly in-
terested in universities and deserving students—
and all were anonymous. He was an ardent
sportsman and traveled extensively both at home
and abroad. In 1904 he married Allene Gano of
Dallas, Tex., and at the time of his sudden death
in Houston was survived by a son.

[Mining and Oil B*U*> Feb. 1924 ; Petroleum World,
Feb. 1934; Oil Age, Feb. 1924; Oil Trade Jour., Feb.
1924; publications of the Hughes Tool Company; Har-
vard College Class of 189?> Fourth Report (1912) and
. . . Twenty-Fifth Anniv. Report (1922); Houston
Post, Jan. 15, 1924; Patent Office records; information
as to certain facts from Hughcs's brother, Rupert
Hughes.] C.W.M.

HUGHES, JAMES (Nov. 24, i823~Qct 21,
1873), lawyer, judge, politician, was bora at
Hamstead, MA When a small child he was taken
to Bloomington, Ind., by his mother. His father
was never a resident of the state. The mother
died soon after migrating from her eastern home
and her son grew up in the families of relatives.
He received an appointment to West Point, but
he decided that, since he did not care to enter
upon a military career, he ought not to be edu-
cated at the expense of the government Resign-
ing his cadetship, therefore, he rettimed to In-
diana, studied law, and was admitted to practice
in 1842. Late in the Mexican War he entered
the army as a lieutenant, but the regiment of
which his company formed a part got no farther
than New Orleans, He then resumed the prac-
tice of law in Bloomington. He was an ardent

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