[2] When he was about nine-years-old, Hugh's family headed west to settle in Lewis County, Missouri, which was still mostly wilderness and inhabited by hostile natives.

So in the Spring of 1849, before news of the California Gold Rush had made it to Lewis County, Hugh joined an expedition going west, across the Great Plains, by way of the Oregon Trail.

The journey finally came to an end on August 12, 1849, when the expedition arrived at the Bear River Mines, in Steep Hollow, California.

He managed a small restaurant for a short time, and worked as a blacksmith in Sacramento, before a cholera epidemic persuaded him to move out of the city.

Hugh was also a member of the local Masonic Lodge and the Sacramento Society of California Pioneers, in which he served as president for a few years shortly before his death in 1906.