Charles H. Lugg (b. 1862, Geneva, Minnesota) served as the superintendent of schools in Hutchinson County, South Dakota. Raised in Freeborn County, Minnesota, he began teaching at 19 after attending high school in Albert Lea and further studies at Valparaiso’s Northern Indiana Normal School. Lugg held various educational roles, including superintendent in Olivet and Parkston, before being elected county superintendent in 1902. A committed Republican and Presbyterian elder, he was active in community and fraternal organizations. In 1894, he married Mary A. Parrott, with whom he had two daughters, Laura and Esther.
Charles H. Lugg, who is the incumbent of the exacting and important office of superintendent of schools in Hutchinson County, was born in Geneva, Freeborn County, Minnesota, on the 21st of October, 1862, being a son of Edward and H. Almifa (Williams) Lugg, to whom were born six children, he being the eldest of the four surviving. The others are as follows: James E., who is a resident of Oakland, Minnesota; Samuel R., who remains at the parental home, as does also Laura Z. The father of the subject was born in Cornwall, England, in the year 1834, and there he was reared and educated. In 1858, at the age of twenty-four years, he severed the home ties and set forth to seek his fortunes in America, landing in Quebec and thence coming westward to Wisconsin. He lived in Racine County, that state, for a year and a half, at the expiration of which he went to Freeborn County, Minnesota, where his marriage was solemnized. There he filed entry on a quarter section of land, and while he was waiting for the passage of the homestead act, through the provisions of which he intended to secure title to his property, another person “jumped” the claim, filing a pre-emption claim and thus securing title to the land. Mr. Lugg later removed to Blue Earth County, where he entered land, disposing of the same about a year later and returning to Freeborn County, where he purchased a farm, to whose improvement and cultivation he has since given his attention, being one of the well-known and highly honored pioneers of that section of the state. His loyalty to the land of his adoption has ever been of the insistent and uncompromising order and was manifested in a distinctive way at the time when the integrity of the Union was menaced by armed rebellion. In August 1864, he enlisted as a private in Company E, Tenth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, in which he served until the close of the war, having made the record of a valiant and loyal son of the republic. He was mustered out in August 1865, having participated in the Battle of Nashville, after which he took part in the closing campaign that brought the crown of victory to the Union arms. He is a staunch advocate of the principles of the Republican party and a consistent and valued member of the Baptist Church. His wife died in July 1892.
Professor Charles H. Lugg was reared on the old homestead farm, and after availing himself of the advantages afforded in the district schools, he entered the high school at Albert Lea, later continuing his studies in the Northern Indiana Normal School and Business University, at Valparaiso. At the age of nineteen years, just after leaving high school, he began his career as a teacher, and his efforts in connection with the pedagogic profession have been attended with most gratifying success, while he has devoted his attention to the same for more than twenty-one years, in Minnesota and South Dakota. He was for one year superintendent of the public schools at Olivet, this state, while for the long period of nine years he served in a similar capacity in the Parkston schools. In the autumn of 1902, he was elected to his present office of county superintendent of schools, the preferment being one justly due him by reason of his ability as an educator and organizer, as well as on the score of his long and able service in the schools of the county. He assumed the discharge of his official duties on the 1st of January, 1903, and has shown marked administrative power and unlimited enthusiasm in his work, aiming to bring the schools of the county up to the highest possible standard of efficiency, while his personality is such that he enlists the hearty co-operation of the teachers of the county as well as of the official boards. In politics, Professor Lugg gives an uncompromising allegiance to the Republican party, and his religious faith is indicated in the fact that both he and his wife are devoted members of the Presbyterian Church, in which he was superintendent of the Sunday school for several years, while at the present time he is an elder in the Parkston church and has charge of the Bible class in its Sunday school. Fraternally, he is identified with Parkston Lodge, No. 99, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and also with the adjunct organization, the Daughters of Rebekah, as well as the local lodge of the Home Guardians.
On Christmas day of the year 1894 was solemnized the marriage of Professor Lugg to Miss Mary A. Parrott, of Dubuque County, Iowa, and they are the parents of two children, Laura A. and Esther A.
Source: Robinson, Doane, History of South Dakota: together with mention of Citizens of South Dakota, [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen, 1904.