About this collection:

➤Thomas Hughes was born on August 25, 1850 in Wheeling, Virginia, the eldest son of Dr. Alfred Hughes, a homeopathic physician and Confederate sympathizer, and Mary Kirby Adrian. During the Civil War, Alfred Hughes was arrested for treason and imprisoned at Camp Chase, near Columbus, Ohio for eight months.  After his release, he and his family moved to Richmond, Virginia.  At the end of the war, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland.  Thomas Hughes attended the Virginia Military Institute during the Civil War and subsequently attended Baltimore City College and graduated in 1871. He then attended the University of Virginia and received his B.L. to practice law. He practiced as a lawyer in Baltimore and died there on December 8, 1941.  Thomas Hughes’ aunt, Eliza Hughes, who graduated from the Pennsylvania Medical College in 1860, was the first female medical practitioner in Virginia.

This collection primarily contains personal and business correspondence of Hughes during his education and practice as a lawyer, consisting of letters, legal documents, and limited ephemera from 1872-1888. The subject of the collection generally pertains to Hughes’ practice as a lawyer in Baltimore, Maryland with only two letters addressed to Eliza Hughes, his aunt, a doctor who lived in Wheeling.

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