1876 Hough Family Letters

1876 Hough Family Letters

Author: Hough Family

Year: 1876

These are the Hough Family Letters from 1876. The Hough family was prominent in early Lafayette, California. The introduction to the letters is as follows: "S. Hough was at Hough Springs in Lake County at the beginning of the year, and he wrote to his family in Lafayette that it was a severe winter. Lots of rain and snow covered the mountains; roads were impassable and the creeks too high to cross much of the time. It would sometimes take months for a letter to arrive. Newspapers were the Call and the Post and these were their source of information on land matters. On May 30, young George wrote that it took him four days to make the trip from Lafayette to Hough Springs. The first day, he got as far as Vacaville; the second day, he got to 16 miles from Colege City; the third day, asfar as Eppersons. "I did not lose the road once coming up," he wrote. On the Fourth of July, there were fireworks and Roman candles in Lafayette. Frank wrote to his brother George that, "We fired off our fireworks and we did not get hurt or burnt. They shot the anvil off 48 times and they used three cans of powder." On August 7, George reported that there were two stages running daily through Hough Spring