Eminent Farmer
County: Brown
Frank McHugh was born in Hastings, Minnesota, July 20, 1889. His father died before Frank was born. His mother later married Isaac Lincoln, an Aberdeen banker who was keenly interested in agriculture.
Young Frank McHugh finished high school in Aberdeen, attended Northern State Teachers’ College for one year, the University of Wisconsin and South Dakota State College.
After graduation, Frank bought a 220-acre plantation near West Point, Mississippi. In 1919 he sold this farm and bought one hundred acres of fertile Imperial Valley soil in California where he raised grapes and other fruits.
When his stepfather died, in 1921, McHugh returned to the 2,400-acre Isaac Lincoln Ranch twelve miles north of Aberdeen.
Intensely interested in crop improvement work, McHugh is believed to have had the first small grain variety demonstration plot in South Dakota.
McHugh has been a director of the state Crop Improvement Association, and president of the county association since it was organized.
In 1949 he was awarded a certificate in recognition of achievement in the conservation of soil and moisture by the State Soil Conservation Committee.
He is an active member of the county livestock improvement association. He was a member of the first Corn Hog committee in the county in 1933. He was a member of the Ration Board during the World War II; president of the local Farm Bureau for four years; president of the Brown county cooperative for seven years; and he has been an active participant in the Elks, the Aberdeen bowling league; the Ordway community club and various community drives like savings bonds, scrap for defense, Red Cross and Christian Rural Overseas Program. He has been on the committee for the annual county Farm and Home days every year since it was started. He is a director of the Aberdeen National Bank and a member of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Aberdeen. He has served three terms in the South Dakota Legislature, twice as senator, once as representative. He has worked closely with 4-H club activities.
McHugh was married in 1947 to Beatrice McNeary, an Ordway farm girl. They are the parents of three boys.