Dr. Franklin Benjamin Hough was born on July 20, 1822, in Martinsburg, Lewis County, New York.

He was a physician, scientist, historian, statistician, and a "father of American forestry." He studied medicine at Western Reserve College (M.D., 1848) and practiced in Somerville, N.Y. from 1848 to 1852. He was a pioneer historian of counties in New York State and an advocate of forest conservation. In 1855 and 1865, he was Superintendent of the State Census for New York and was also involved in the 1875 census. He was one of seven Commissioners of Parks in New York in 1872 and in 1876, he became a Forestry Agent in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hough was extremely active in making known the depletion of American forests and in 1885, he drafted the law that led to the preservation of the Adirondack Forest. He published several reports on forest management. He is the author of "A History of St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties, New York" (1853) and "A History of Jefferson County in the State of New York" (1854).

In 1845, he married Sarah Maria Eggleston (1816–1848) and in 1849, he remarried Mariah Ellen Kilham (1829–1910). He died on June 11, 1885, in Lowville, Lewis, New York.