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Welcome to Hughes
County SDGenWeb
Pierre SD circa 1900
My name is Bob
Jenkins and I created this
website to provide genealogy
information and links to genealogy
information to assist people in
researching
their Hughes County South Dakota
ancestors.
I would appreciate any
contribution that you would like to
make to this site:
biographies, obituaries, birth,
marriage, death info, grave info,
photographs....etc
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Use the box below to
search
for Hughes
County Data
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Brief
History:
Hughes County is located in
the approximate center of the state and of
the North American Continent. Hughes
County was organized in November of
1880 and named after Alexander Hughes.
Mitchell disputed Pierre's selection
as state capitol for several years,
finally giving up the fight to have it
changed
about 1903. Due to its location on
the river (Missouri), it was an early
center of river trade. In 1863, the army
established a post called Ft. Sully
about four miles from what is now Pierre.
It was active there until it was moved
north on the river to Sully County
in 1866. The very southern area of the
county as set aside for the Crow Creek
Indian Reservation.
Some of the early settlers in the
area were J. P. Laughlin, Joseph Reed,
Burt Dickey and Eva Dix. Prior to these
hardy people there were many
trappers and hunters that came and went on
the other areas, some stayed.
In 1883, three small communities
were organized in Hughes County to the
east of Pierre. They were Blunt, Harrold
and Canning. All had several
businesses in their early years and
schools and postal service. Blunt and
Harrold still
are active. In the 1890's Blunt had
about 1,500 people with a decline to about
500 in 1935. Both Harrold and Blunt
had newspapers in the 1800's, and
for some years after that. Originally the
site of Canning was called Paxton, and it
was the little village of Paxton
that in 1880 had the first official post
office. The first school district in the
county was
formed in 1881 which started the
operation of several area school houses.
For about six years Pierre had
"Pierre University" in operation but
due to financial problems it was moved to
Huron about 1898. In 1891, the
"Pierre Indian Leaning Center" was
started under the name of the "Pierre
Indian School", and remains active to this
time.
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