Background
James Duncan Hague (1836-1908) was an American mining engineer. He was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, and graduated from the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1855 and did
graduate work in chemistry and minerology in Göttingen and Freiberg, Germany. After
returning to the United States in 1859, Hague was selected to explore several equatorial
coral islands in the Pacific Ocean in search of phosphate deposits. He was associated with
Edwin J. Hulbert in the discovery and early development of the Calumet and Hecla copper
mines in Michigan; in 1867, he was made first assistant to Clarence King on the United
States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel. He later became a consulting mining
engineer in San Francisco and developed many mining enterprises, including the North Star
Mine in Grass Valley, California. In April 1872, Hague married Mary Ward Foote (1846–1898),
sister-in-law of Mary Hallock Foote (1847-1938); the couple had three children: Marian Hague
(1873–1971), Eleanor Hague (1875–1954), and William Hague (1882–1918). Hague died August 3,
1908, at his summer home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
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