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Born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1819, raised and educated primarily in Boston, Frederic Hudson spent two years at school in Concord—the culmination of his formal education—before heading to New York to seek his fortune in 1836, at the age of seventeen. He soon went to work for the New York Herald. Hudson's professionalism and dedication impressed Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, who ultimately appointed him managing editor of the paper. Hudson was key in the establishment of the Associated Press. In 1844, Frederic Hudson married former Concord Academy student and public school teacher Eliza Woodward, daughter of Ebenezer and Persis Adams Woodward. Their only child—son Woodward—was born in New York in 1858. Frederic Hudson retired from the Herald in 1866 and moved permanently to Concord with his family. They lived on Main Street, in a house located where 252 Main now stands. Hudson's History of Journalism in America—still consulted today—was published in 1873. From 1873 until 1875, Frederic was a member of Concord's Library Committee. By the time the Hudsons moved to Concord, Eliza had become an invalid. In October of 1875, a carriage bearing John Shepard Keyes (see #20 and #38) and Frederic Hudson was hit by a train at the Monument Street crossing of the Middlesex Central Railroad. Keyes, who was driving, walked away from the accident, but Hudson died of his injuries. Mrs. Hudson died in 1876, at the age of fifty-eight, less than a year after her husband's fatal accident. This fine early daguerreotype captures the intimacy of young married love as well as Mrs. Hudson's bloom and vitality, which illness later ravaged (see #22). |
21. Frederic and Eliza Woodward Hudson, 1846. From a daguerreotype, presented by Marion Hudson Wilmot.|
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