Hugh Baskin was born at Midway, Texas, near Gorman. His hobby was horses. Beginning his business as a trader while still in his teens, he was heir to a strain of the Texas Mustang, which many generations back were driven along the Chisolm Trail.

Many years before Hugh's time, a ranch near Cleburne, in Johnson County, on the Nolan River, belonging to his grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. Richard Bennett, was a watering place & a night stopover for trail drivers & their herds of horses and cattle headed from Texas to Kansas. Richard Bennett & his family had homesteaded 160 acres of land near Rio Vista in southwestern Johnson county, which was near the spot where the Chisolm Trail crossed the Brazos River at Old Kimball & a portion of the trail ran over the Bennett pasture land. During the night, if calves or colts were born, & frequently one or more was, they were given to the Bennetts. Many years before the 1950's, the ancestor's of these horses & cattle had been running free & wild on the Baskin ranch land south of Jewell where Hugh was born.

The adjoining sections belonging to Loughry, Chaney & Foster estates had been leased by him since the 1920's. He ran cattle on the pasture lands and sub-leased the tillable land.

He used to keep a little book & would call the roll of his many stock, each head being identified by the name of its former owner. He bought & sold cattle at Stephenville, Comanche & Eastland. He bought & sold horses at the auction barns in Brownwood. The best he sometimes added to his young herds while he resold the others, traded on his town lot, or hauled to auction again & sold. Other members of the Baskin family used to run some on the pastures where there was ample water in many tanks, even in a drought.

Hugh's sister, Dora Jane, had a partnership in some of the cattle and they had a herd of Brahman. Winter feed was once hauled in wagons, but by the 1950's Hugh used his pickup, which he also used to round up strays.

Hugh was the son of James Willis Baskin & Sarah Jeanette Bennett Baskin. Being able to do math in his head, he was often way ahead of the bookkeeper & even the ring master. With rapid calculations, he could estimate an acceptable bid, while at the same time sparring with other traders in the progressive low bids, keeping the ball rolling for the ringmaster.

Hugh would loan ponies to the neighborhood children or put the small ones on & lead the horse. His horses were always in the Festival parade. He never married & lived his entire life in & around Gorman, where he died at the age of 70. He's buried in the family plot at Elm Cemetery.