A few years after General Stringfellow immigrated from Missouri into Kansas, there came another famous lawyer, who was also formerly an attorney-general of Missouri, Gen. Bela M. Hughes. General Hughes was also one of the brilliant lawyers of an early day, who remained in Atchison but a few years as general counsel for the Overland Stage Line. Before coming to Atchison, General Hughes was a resident of St. Joseph, where he was the president and general counsel for the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company. When this line was sold, under a mortgage foreclosure, to Ben Holladay, in 1862, General Hughes came to Atchison. He served as general counsel for Mr. Holladay until the line was purchased by Wells, Fargo & Company. He was retained by this company as its general counsel, which continued to operate the overland stage line, until a railroad was built across the plains, meanwhile moving to Denver, where he was elected the first president and general counsel of the Denver & Pacific railway, the first railroad to enter Denver, in July, 1870, and he later became general counsel for the Denver & South Park railroad, and a member of the last territorial legislature of Colorado. General Hughes was born in Kentucky, educated at Augusta College, and removed with his parents at an early date to Liberty, Mo. He was a member of the Missouri legislature, prosecuting attorney, and receiver of the United States land office at Plattsburg, from which place he went to St. Joseph. In his early youth he was a soldier in the Black Hawk war, serving with the Missouri volunteers. He took up his residence in Denver in the late sixties, when the city had less than 5,000 inhabitants. He died in Denver in 1904, at the age of eighty-six years.