H. Stuart Hughes - Early Life

Early Life

Hughes was born to privilege as the grandson of Charles Evans Hughes, 1916 Republican Party nominee for President, and claimed in his memoirs to have been used as a "campaign baby" as an infant. Hughes' father left for World War I while Stuart was still an infant, returning a year later when his son was three. Stuart was his parents' second child and second son and was born only 14 months after his elder brother, Charles Evans Hughes, III; the couple was later to have two daughters as well.

In 1922, Hughes' family moved to suburban Riverdale, Bronx, New York, where he spent most of his boyhood. This was interrupted in early 1929, when Hughes' father Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. was appointed United States Solicitor General by the new President, Herbert Hoover. The family's stay in Washington, D.C. was relatively brief; Charles Hughes, Jr. was compelled to resign as Solicitor General when his father was appointed Chief Justice of the United States upon the death of William Howard Taft in 1930. He moved his family back to New York. Stuart was soon sent to boarding school at Deerfield Academy. He then attended Amherst College from 1933 to 1937. While in college, Hughes spent two summers in Germany in summer study programs, which were to serve him in good stead later.