The following was written by Tilla Leona Hughes, the original Hughes family genealogist, about 1953.
As I look back over my memories of my mother, I believe one of her chief characteristics was her interest in everything that was going on in the world. Sally Ann Locy from her childhood loved books. She read everything she could get her hands on. There was the weekly newspaper, but no public library in the farming community in which she grew up. Some neighbors had a few books which she borrowed.
Once she brought home a book of poetry, and read it with great delight. Her father asked her what she was so much interested in, and she answered, "The Lady of the Lake, Father." The title sounded a little like a novel, and grandpa thought novels a waste of time. He took the book, read a stanza here and there, sat down & read the whole book through without stopping. The next time he went to town he bought his little daughter a copy of Scott's poems, bound in red cloth, and printed with a wreath of tiny flowers around the verses on every page. That was her first book, and it is now one of my prized possessions.
Her schooling was a little aout the average for that time. She was a student for a while at Hiram College, a classmate of James A. Garfield and his future wife Lucretia Rudolph; also big gawky Bill Hazen, who later became well-known as General William B. Hazen. Her schooling, but not her education, ended with her marriage before she was eighteen.
She was ambitious for her children, and never failed to encourage any tiny spark of aspiration that any one of us showed. I recall her reading to my brothers the "Ragged Dick" series, Cooper's Leather Stocking Tales, Scott's novels, and even Shakespeare.
Her chief interests were history & biography. She knew well the kings and queens and the great of all lands & times, and when we wished to know who was who, we asked Mother.
After her family were grown up & away she read to my father, till he became so deaf she had to entertain him some other way. Then she learned to play cards. My best snapshot shows them sitting at a small table, he with a rather puzzled look, & Mother with a smile of victory.
Her last two years were spent in a wheel-chair due to a fall. But to the last she wore that smile of victory, -- not alone over an opponent at cards, but over all the difficulties of life.