WILLIAM P.
HUGHES
Editor/Manager- Los Gatos Mail
Bio-Pen Pictures
SURNAMES: MURPHY
The Los Gatos Weekly Mail is a seven-column folio, published by the Mail Publishing Company, the following gentlemen being the officers: Peter Johnson, president; Wm. P. Hughes, editor and manager. It is one of the neatest looking and most ably edited country papers in California. Established in 1884, it met with success from the start. But after about eight months, the manager, H. H. Main, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, becoming interested in many other enterprises, found that the Mail or his other business would have to be given up, so he sold to Wm. P. Hughes, the present editor and manager, and practical proprietor.
Mr. Hughes had a great many disadvantages to undergo, but with energy, perseverance, and intelligence he has made the Mail what it is to-day—first-class in every respect, and paying handsomely. Its circulation is large and rapidly increasing, and the people of the section have the utmost confidence in it.
Wm. P. Hughes, the editor and manager of the Mail, was born in Salem, Marion County, Illinois, on October 14, 1857. His parents removed to Dixon, Lee County, Illinois, in 1859, thence to Austin, Texas, where Mr. Hughes resided until ten years of age, when he left home, went to San Antonio, Texas, and engaged, with a namesake, Thomas Hughes, to go up the Chism trail, through the Indian Territory, with a herd of ten thousand cattle. After arriving in Parker, a town near the border of the Territory, in Kansas, he engaged as an apprentice on the Journal, a cow-boy paper published there at the time. After serving about a year he went to Topeka, the capital, and served three years on the Daily State Gazette, when he left for Quincy, Illinois, where he joined the Typographical Union, of which society he is an honored member to-day. He then traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada, working on the most influential dailies in North America, when he returned to his old home in Austin in 1876.
In the spring of this year he joined the Frontier Battalion of the State of Texas, known as the Texas Rangers, and served with honor and credit to himself and State until November 30, 1877, when he received an honorable discharge. He was the youngest member ever in that service. He then foremanized on various papers in Texas, and went to New Orleans in the fall of 1878, where he worked on the Democrat. In the spring of 1879 he took a trip up the Mississippi River, visiting Vicksburg, Memphis, Cairo, and St. Louis, thence to Kansas City, and finally to Denver, where he remained until August, when he went to the then “booming” mining camp of Leadville, where he resided for nearly two years, working on the Chronicle and dealing in mining property.
In the fall of 1881 he went to Laramie City, Wyoming Territory, where he took the position of foreman on the Evening Times, which he held for about a year, when he came to California. After residing in San Francisco and Sacramento about six months, her returned to Laramie, at the urgent request of the proprietor, to resume charge of the composing room of the Times. Here he fell victim to Cupid’s darts, and married his present wife, the daughter of P. G. Murphy, one of the best-known and most highly respected ranchers in the Rocky Mountains. He and his wife then went to Denver and Pueblo, Colorado, where they resided until 1883, when they went to Eureka, Nevada. Mr. Hughes held a responsible position on the Sentinel until December, 1884, when he removed, with his family, to San Francisco.
In January, 1885, he purchased the controlling interest in the Los Gatos Mail.
He is a young man,
thirty years old, and is possessed of that force of character which always
places a man in the front rank, and yet has that control over his temper,
smoothness of disposition, courteous and urbane nature, which make him
universally esteemed.
Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.
Pg. 107-108
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
SANTA CLARA COUNTY BIOGRAPHY PROJECT