Hughes Granite Company Created Ohio's Enduring Civil War Memorials

The name Hughes Granite is long gone from Clyde, Ohio, but the exceptional markers, monuments, and memorials the company created remain a physical presence throughout the eastern half of the United States. Carmi Sanford founded the company in the 1880s. After Sanford’s death in 1893, his brother-in-law William E. Hughes oversaw operations. Under his management, the firm flourished becoming one of the best-known granite companies in the United States.

The secret to Hughes’ success was quality. He purchased stone directly from quarries in Scotland, New York, and Vermont. The company employed as many as 55 master stonecutters, sculptors, and engineers. Its most skilled sculptor was James B. King who, like several other Hughes employees, came from Scotland to work for Hughes.

Located on East Buckeye Street in Clyde, the Hughes Granite cutting room featured the most modern tools for cutting, polishing, and carving. The end product was a beautifully executed, high quality, durable marker.

An astute businessman, Hughes also perfected the use of ventilation in designing mausoleums and crypts. His American Mausoleum Company constructed more than 100 mausoleums nationwide, including the Inglewood Park Mausoleum in Inglewood California.
Perhaps the company’s greatest success came when the state of Ohio selected its designs to memorialize its Civil War dead. Competing against 11 other firms, Hughes won the contract to create 34 monuments for Ohio’s fallen at Shiloh battlefield near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. Employees described their efforts as a “labor of love and duty.” In addition to creating the monuments, the company agreed to deliver them to the site. The monuments were transported to Tennessee by rail and barge. Each 16-ton monument was raised from the river up the 100-foot bluff to the battlefield.

In the spring of 1902, during a ceremony at Shiloh, the state dedicated the monuments to its native sons. One Ohioan accurately predicted “the beautiful memorials… will stand and be admired by future generations when the memory of those who created them has been forever buried in oblivion.” And so it is.

Hughes Granite and Marble Company may be lost to time, but its inspired work lives on as part of the sacred landscape of Andersonville and the Civil War battlefields of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, and Chickamauga.

Read about the Hughes Granite and Marble Company in-depth at Sandusky County Scrapbook.

Courage at Shiloh

Henry Buckland eased his brother Chester down onto the filthy deck of the crowded steamboat as gently as he could. Henry had carried Chester from the battlefield, stumbling through the smoke, mud, and underbrush to reach the river landing where hundreds of Shiloh’s casualties were being loaded onto boats. Even in the darkness and pouring rain, Henry could see that his little brother’s face had turned deathly white. As the steamboat began to move out into the current, Henry tightened the blood-soaked bandage one last time and then jumped ashore.

Chester Buckland

Henry could not help thinking that only 24 hours earlier, Chester was full of life, fighting valiantly to fend off Rebel troops who had nearly overwhelmed his company. That evening, Chester had proudly written every detail of the fight to their mother, reminding her that “if I die, it is for my country.” And that very morning, Chester had stood bravely on the battle line with his 72nd Ohio comrades as thousands of Rebels came streaming out of the woods directly at them.

Henry believed that their friend Arthur Fitch would care for Chester as the boat steamed its way up the Mississippi River toward Ohio. But it was not to be. When Fremont, Ohio physician Dr. LaQuino Rawson arrived in Cincinnati to help with the wounded, he discovered Chester’s body. He learned that Chester had died before reaching Cincinnati. Locating a metal coffin, Dr. Rawson sent the body to Fremont, Ohio and then telegraphed the sad news to the boy’s parents.

Days later, family, friends, and neighbors gathered at Oakwood Cemetery in Fremont, Ohio, where Chester was laid to rest. The community had come not only to mourn his loss, but to honor his courage and sacrifice. If only a private, Chester was the highly regarded son of one of Fremont’s most prominent citizens. His former employer, the editor of the Fremont Journal, honored the memory of his promising young assistant by publishing a lengthy obituary and his letter describing his heroic actions at the Battle of Shiloh.

Military historians often refer to Shiloh as a “soldiers’ battle.” For it was not military leadership or tactics that brought Union victory in the first, great bloody battle of the Civil War. Rather it was the ferocious fighting of raw recruits like brave young Chester Buckland.