The Enduring Civil War Monuments of the Hughes Granite & Marble
Company
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 U.S.
The secret to Hughes’ success was quality. He purchased stone directly from
Scotland, New York, and New England quarries. The company employed as many as
55 master stone cutters, sculptors, and engineers. Its most skilled sculptor was
James B. King who, like several other Hughes employees, was Scottish born. Located
on East Buckeye Street, the Hughes Granite cutting room featured the most modern
tools for cutting, polishing, and carving. The end product was a beautifully executed,
high quality, long-lasting marker. An astute businessman, Hughes also perfected the
use of ventilation in mausoleums and crypts. His American Mausoleum Company
constructed more than 100 mausoleums nationwide.
Perhaps the company’s greatest success came when Ohio selected its designs to
memorialize the state's 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 Tennessee 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 that “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 in time, but its inspired work lives
on as part of the sacred landscape of the battlefields of Shiloh, Vicksburg,
Gettysburg, Antietam, and Chickamauga.