From genealogical records of Robert Rolfe Phillips, a direct descendant:

David Hough was born in New London, Connecticut on Jan 27, 1724 [also reported as Jan 27, 1723]. He married Desire Clark on May 19, 1748. He was 24 years old and Desire was 20 (b. August 3, 1728). They had their first child some 5 ½ months later, the first of twelve for Desire who died January 20, 1764 at the age of 35. She died sixteen days after giving birth to her twelfth child, a daughter named Desire. David remarried some four months later, marrying Jemina Baldwin, on May 24, 1764. They had six more children, for a total of eighteen. The children were spread over a period of 31 years.

Captain David Hough did service in the Revolution as a Captain in the Connecticut Militia. He also was in the service of the Confederation in 1776 and 1777, as a ship builder, and helped build the flotilla on Lake Champlain. This helped defeat the British effort to cut off the New England colonies from the middle Atlantic colonies, by invading down from Canada early in the war. The Confederate was a 36 gun privateer, built on the Thames River near Norwich, Conn. Many Yankee privateers sailed out of this port throughout the revolution.

Of the six sons of David Hough’s first marriage, all served as soldiers in the Revolution, as did the father. Son Wade was killed in September 1776, early in the war. He was seventeen years old, and the youngest in the family to serve. Three sons, David (R5252), Daniel (W16029), and John (W15685) lived to collect pensions for their service. They are listed in the Index to Revolutionary War Pensioners in the National Archives.

In 1778, David Hough moved to New Hampshire and bought a farm. He was 54 years old. There he represented his district in the State Legislature for a number of terms. He became a colonel in the militia and was a delegate to the Convention to adopt the Constitution of the United States. Under the presidency of John Adams, he was collector of Internal Revenue, and was elected and served two terms in the Congress of the United States. He died in 1798 at the age of 74.