For years active in the promotion of the general interests of the city of Utica, particularly in that field of development related to the wonderful expansion of electrical power during the past decade and more, Dennis Anthony Hughes, secretary and treasurer of the Langdon & Hughes Electric Company of Utica, has come to be recognized as a very definite factor in the general commercial and industrial life of that city. Mr. Hughes is a native son of the Mohawk Valley, and has lived here all his life, his interests thus naturally centering in the development work of which he has been a part here since the days of his boyhood. He was born at Clark Mills, in Oneida county, New York, December 29, 1886, and is a son of James A. and Catherine (Lawless) Hughes, the latter of whom is still living. James A. Hughes died in 1907.
Reared at Utica, Dennis A. Hughes received his early schooling in the parochial schools of that city and supplemented this by a course in Assumption Academy at Utica, from which institution he was graduated in 1906. He had given particular attention to commercial forms in the pursuit of his studies and had made bookkeeping a specialty. Thus equipped for active commercial service, he entered the office of F. A. Coakley, who at that time was carrying on a coal business in Utica, and some time later took similar employment in the office of the Foster Brothers Manufacturing Company. A year later he became employed in the local office of the New York Central Railroad Company and was thus connected for two years, at the end of which time he associated himself with the operations of the Porter Electrical Company. Two years later (in 1911) Mr. Hughes, in association with Walter Thomas Langdon, also a practical electrical engineer, organized and incorporated the Langdon & Hughes Electric Company and has since been engaged in business at Utica, operating under that firm name, Mr. Hughes serving as secretary and treasurer of the company, of which Mr. Langdon is the president. Not only does this company cover the field in the trade area which it represents hereabout as general electrical engineers and contractors, but it carries on as general wholesale and retail dealers in electric supplies and acts as agents for the local distribution of apparatus for the General Electric Company, and has created a very definite business with an admirably equipped establishment at Nos. 229-33 Elizabeth street in Utica.
Dennis A. Hughes married Miss Margaret Conway, daughter of Mrs. Mary Conway of Jersey City, New Jersey, and he and his wife have one child, a daughter, Mary Jane. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes are affiliated with the Roman Catholic church and Mr. Hughes is a member of the Utica council of the Knights of Columbus. He also is a member of the Utica lodge of the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks. In the general civic and social affairs of the city he has ever taken a proper interest and is now the president of the locally influential City Club of Utica.