The Hughes Farm of Broadlawn Township.

Photo of Hughes Farm from 1892 Illustrated Historical Atlas of Traill and Steele Counties North Dakota. The barn was expanded at some point between this photo and 1940 and still stands. The house was torn down in the 1970s. Courtesy Library of Congress at this link

  

I grew up on a farm that my grandparents moved to in 1940. The farm had first been settled in the 1880s by a man named Andrew Hughes, better known as. A.C.  He purchased Nothern Pacific Railroad land, so it wasn't technically a homestead of the Homestead Act. I am still trying to narrow down the exact details of that angle. Hughes acquired the whole of Section 1 seen below from the same atlas as above. J.B. Holman was an early settler, but now relation to Nick Holman who didn't arrive in the U.S. until 1898.

Hughes wife died in 1892 while he died in 1894. Interestingly, they are buried in Fargo instead of nearby Clifford. According to the Hope Pioneer, they lost a baby in 1891 while living on the farm. This may be one of the settler burials I remember hearing about that were supposedly on the hillside above the farm.

 The sons were still on the farm in the 1900 Census, but were gone by 1910. The 1890 Census that was lost in a tragic fire, unfortunately isn't available toshed light on tier first years on the farm.

The daughter Katie went on to graduate from Mayville Normal School, possibly in one of the first classes. She later taught at the Broadlawn school that her father had helped start according to newspaper accounts and later at Clifford. She married and they ran the Clifford Hotel for a few years, before moving to Hope to run the hotel there. She later went on to work on a history of Hope and Steele County. 

My research on this has just begun. Stay tuned.