The Hughes Family
Felix and Jean Hughes moved with their three super achieving children to Keokuk in 1879. Felix served as Mayor, President of the Keokuk and Western Railroad and was a Supreme Court Justice. The three children were born in Lancaster, Missouri: Greta on June 4, 1866; Howard, Sr., on September 9, 1869; and Rupert on January 31, 1872.
Greta was a tall, stately beauty with a grand soprano voice. She studied in Paris and New York singing under the name Jean Greta, a combination of her mother’s name and her own. She died on February 21, 1916.
Howard Sr. attended Harvard University from 1893 to 1895 and then attended the University of Iowa. After school, Hughes returned to Keokuk to practice law but soon moved to Texas to try his hand in the oil industry. He was thwarted by drill bits that were not strong enough to cut through rock. Returning to Keokuk he succeeded in inventing a drill bit with 166 cutting edges that could cut through rock with ten times the speed of other bits. The bit revolutionized the oil industry and earned Hughes a fortune.
Howard Sr. died January 14, 1924 leaving his entire fortune to his son, Howard Hughes Jr., who was just eighteen. In time, Howard Hughes, Jr., would become the richest man in the world.
Rupert Hughes studied music and literature at Yale University where he received a Master of Arts degree. In his twenties, Rupert began a career of writing and composing that lasted 60 years. He wrote more than 60 books and wrote and/or directed 50 silent and sound motion pictures. One of Hughes more famous writings In a Little Town published in 1917 featured 14 short stories about people in fictional towns around Keokuk. Rupert Hughes died September 9, 1956.
Matriarch, Jean Hughes had a strange phobia and when son, Howard Hughes Sr. offered to build her a home on Grand Avenue she insisted that it be built without closets “as that was surely where diseases grew.”
Felix and Jean had another three children after moving to Keokuk. Two died in infancy and Reginald died at age 5. Felix and Jean and their three youngest children are buried in the Hughes family plot in Keokuk’s Oakland Cemetery.
Today, Howard Hughes, Jr. is remembered for his entrepreneurism, his eccentric behavior and his reclusive lifestyle caused in part by an obsessive–compulsive disorder and chronic pain. Howard Hughes Jr. died April 5, 1976.