Ohio History Journal

HUDSON CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.   HUDSON, OHIO, JUNE 5, 1900. The city of Hudson, Ohio, Summit county, celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its settlement on the date noted above. The following account of that interesting occasion is prepared mainly from the record of the proceedings furnished us by the courtesy of Prof. W. I. Cham- berlain. We are indebted to Mrs. Edwin P. Gregory of Hudson for a copy of the portrait of her grandfather, David Hudson; and to Prof. H. W. Woodward for a photograph of the oil portrait of Heman Oviatt, now in the possession of Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.- E. O. R., Editor. The day was all that could have been desired, one of the most delightful June productions. Throngs of former Hudson residents, representing all parts of the country, had returned to

their former home to join in the memories and festivities of the cel- ebration. Nearly two thousand per- sons registered their presence in the register provided for that purpose. Some seven hundred attended the literary and musical exercises at the church, while more than a thousand participated in the dinner which was spread in the huge tent erected in the park. The exercises of the day were inaugurated in the morning by a procession which formed in the Hudson Park and marched to the Congregational Church. The par-

ticipants were the Hudson Military Band, the school children, with teachers, members of the societies, speakers, citizens and visitors. The Hon. W. I. Chamberlain presided over the var- ious exercises of the day. After appropriate music of both instrumental and vocal character, the invocation was pronounced by the Rev. George Darling, pastor of the Hudson Congrega- (318)

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.          319

tional Church (1858-1873 inclusive). The Rev. Charles W. Car-

roll read the Scriptures (122nd Psalm) and offered the Centen-

nial prayer. The address of the day was delivered by Dr.

Ebenezer Bushnell who, Prof. Chamberlain said in introducing

him, "graduated in college (Western Reserve) here 54 years ago,

and married a Hudson girl, the daughter of Deacon Sylvester

Baldwin, 50 years ago."

 

DR. BUSHNELL'S ADDRESS.

There are people to whom their ancestors have become the

gods they worship. Excess and misguidance of veneration have

degenerated into superstition of the basest description. But

this is only the degradation of that which is, in itself, noble and

elevating in human nature. By the impulses of nature parents

take an interest in the well-being of their children, and strive to

rear them for the best. By like impulses we look back to those

who have preceded us with affectionate regard, and attribute to

them all excellent characteristics, all lofty and inspiring actions.

It is well thus. He who can be proud of his forefathers is wont

to feel that honorable things are rightly demanded of him. He

must be worthy of those who have done what they could to make

his sojourn on earth comfortable, successful, with a benediction

for the future.

But, to be duly impressed by the story of the fathers we

need somewhat more than the bare facts and figures which detail

their course. We need to picture to our imagination the inci-

dents of their lives. Let them leap upon the stage before our

eyes. Let us look upon the progress of their toils. Let us hear

their shouts of encouragement and stimulation, their songs of

cheer, their sighs of sorrow, and their tender words of mutual

sympathy. Thus entering into their experience, we may the

more faithfully carry on every worthy work which they have laid

down at the feet of our truth and industry-for us still to push

forward. So are the generations bound together into one whole,

and human progress is a thing of perennial growth. So each

generation becomes a foundation on which its successor may

build, broader and higher.

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A township was bought 101 years ago, by three men, one

of whom was David Hudson. It had, as yet, no name, but, like

a convict on a prison-galley, was numbered. Its designation was

"Township 4, Range 10." It had cost 34 cents per acre.

The next problem was to find this land, then to subdue

and develop it. To this task Mr. Hudson devoted himself.

Collecting a suitable number of helpers he set out on the journey.

In these days we cover this distance in twenty-four hours. It

took them just about forty times as long. You may follow them

making their way to Lake Ontario-to the Niagara river, draw-

ing their goods and boats around the mighty cataract, and to

a safe distance above the rapids. Then, conquering an ice-

gorge, see them wending their toilsome way along the southern

shore of Lake Erie. Mostly rowing, sometimes hoisting a

blanket for a sail, once driven on shore in a heavy wind and

losing a portion of their provisions, they finally reached the

Cuyahoga river. The water being at a low stage, they were

often obliged to get out of the boat and push it over shallow

places. Ten days were consumed in ascending to the mouth

of Brandywine creek, where, one night, they were robbed of a

quantity of flour, pork, whiskey and other valuables. Six days

were then spent in finding the west line of the township. They

who have never attempted to find and follow a surveyor's line,

merely blazed on trees, in an unbroken forest, will not be able to

appreciate the seriousness of this undertaking.

But at last Mr. Hudson and his company have planted foot

upon the soil of "Township 4, Range 10." A sense of victory

swells their breasts with satisfaction. You can imagine the in-

trepid man's soliloquy:

"This is the forest primeval, the towering oaks and the beeches,

Poplars and maples, chestnuts, glowering walnuts and elm-trees,

Stand like grim old giants of fable, forbidding our coming,

Sternly denying our lordship, laughing to scorn axe and ploughshare,

All the same down theymust come and meekly yield to the victor,

No longer wood-strength, but muscle and brain-power shall here hold

dominion."

And at the task they valiantly went. Those who came and

joined the settlement within the next fourteen years have been

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.         321

 

accounted pioneers. Names of seventy-three are given, the pre-

vailing names being Hudson, Bishop, Hollenbeck, Darrow,

Gaylord, Oviatt, Thompson, Pease, Leach, Kilbourne, Kellogg,

Lusk, Brown, Whedon, Holcomb, Post, Johnson, Chamberlain,

Stone, Baldwin, Kingsbury, Ellsworth, Metcalf, Cobb, Mills,

Case.

Certainly the primitive dwellings were log-cabins, and the

manner of life was very plain and simple, though none the less

respectable for that. They were without some things of which

we possess plenty. They had no friction matches, probably only

the old-fashioned tinder-boxes.  In the old times the fire-

problem was not without difficulty. Mr. Hudson complains in

one place that he lost his fire in a wet time while on his travels.

How to renew it? After being thoroughly settled in homes

the pioneers must carefully cover the fire at night. Suppose it

should go out! If neighbors were near enough, John or

Robert must take a shovel and start off to "borrow some fire."

Our pioneers did not have inflammable gas, light-giving, in their

homes, only tallow candles, holding a "bee" two or three times

a year to "dip" a supply of candles. They had no water-pipes;

water was brought into the house, in pails. Manifestly the

pioneers had no hot-air furnaces, no steam-heat, no baseburners.

But such magnanimous fire-places! with great back-logs, and

fore-sticks. A wild turkey properly prepared and suspended

on a cord before the vigorous fire could be roasted to a turn,

equal to the cooking of a most accomplished range. In time

the tin reflector came as a god-send to the housewife. All these

things are passed away, even to the wild turkeys.

But these people had some things which we lack, and which

the younger ones among us would like to witness as curiosities,

e.g., the flax-brake, requiring the labor of a muscular man to

operate. It broke up the stalks of the plant into short pieces.

Then the swingle, which separated the woody portions from the

fiber. When this was done the outcome held up in a full hand

would inform you why you call your little girl a "flaxen-haired"

damsel.

As one journeys now over these highways of a winter day,

he no longer hears the thump of the flail in the barn, as the farmer

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pounds out his wheat from the bundles, nor the hum of the

spinning-wheel as the wife or daughter spins the rolls into yarn

for knitting or weaving. This work is now done by machinery.

Such is the progress of human improvement. Now the de-

scendants of that generation ride to church in carriages, like

nabobs as they are, not in ox-carts, nor on bob-sleds. Trav-

ersing these roads and swinging scythes in these fields appeared

the stalwart form of Horace Metcalf, and the lesser but not less

industrious persons of the Browns, Oviatts, Thompsons, and the

rest, too numerous to mention. The sick were ministered to in

excursions by day or night, in rain or sunshine, in heat and cold

by Drs. Moses Thompson, Jonathan Metcalf, Israel Town. The

early physicians of a community, such as this was, grow into the

family-life and the heart-affections of those to whom they faith-

fully minister.

It is worth while to remark the results of the combined

efforts of the men who at that early date in the history of the

Western Reserve stood for everything good and virtuous and

godly in the community. Those whom you especially com-

memorate today stand, in the annals of the whole region, as an

integral portion of the army which contended for everything

good, honorable and substantial. Numbers of these men were

ministers. As I have looked over the history I have been

surprised at the extent to which it seems to me the communities

were moulded into all forms of intelligence and virtue, by such

men as Harvey Coe, Caleb Pitkin, Ansel R. Clark, Dan'l C.

Blood, Simeon Woodruff, Ephraim T. Woodruff, Wm. Han-

ford, John Seward, Dexter Witter, Alfred Newton and Enoch

Conger.

It would be by no means seemly or just to forbear the

acknowledgement of what was done in the pioneer days by the

women. The average man's wife is as brave and as sensible

and as persistent as he is, and oftentimes a good deal better.

And the average man is better and stronger for having at his

elbow a courageous helper.

Mrs. Harvey Baldwin, daughter of Mr. Hudson, being the

first white child born in the township, deserves to be accounted

the most genuine, simon-pure, pioneer of the whole. She lived

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and died here in a good old age, the exemplification and embodi-

ment of all womanly gentleness and godliness. Many a young

man became for a time an inmate of her family. I believe every

such an one was charmed with her motherly excellence. Gentle

souls may be born in rude circumstances, and live in simple

fashion.

Of the wife of Heman Oviatt it is said that she exerted a

most salutary influence over the Indians who frequented the

neighborhood. Being acquainted with the languages of three

of their tribes, she could hold conversation with them, and by

uniform kindness shown them she softened their manners and

made them more agreeable and safer neighbors. At one time

she rode on horseback to Warren to testify in court in defense

of one or two wrongfully or excessively accused. The kindness

was afterwards repaid her by one of the Indians who brought

her a remedy for some illness with which she was afflicted. But

she fell by the way, dying before she reached the age of forty

years.

These women are not named because they were alone in the

community, as examples of all good and noble qualities. Other

names stand with theirs on the roll of honor, as Rebecca Wilcox,

Polly Kellogg Pease, Mary Thompson Hazeltine, Aurelia Kel-

logg Peck, Sarah P. Brewster, Theodosia Ingersoll. One might

almost say "From one know all."

These men and women lived in cabins, with oiled paper for

window-glass, though Mr. Hudson had brought glass, with

puncheon-floors under their feet, and home-made clothing upon

their persons. They contended against wild animals and wild

men. A rude mortar made of a tree stump with a billet of wood

suspended over it as a pestle, with which corn was broken up

into hominy, graced the door-yard of one of the pioneer min-

isters, and when a young man-a bit wild, I calculate-asked

him  what it was, he replied-"That? That's priest-craft."

They gathered the sap for making maple sugar in wooden

troughs, hauled it to the "sugar-camp" on rude sleds and boiled

it in iron kettles. They worked hard, had a good time, drank

some whiskey, no doubt, ate pork, and endured-lasting, on an

average, the life-time of two generations and more.

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Among these early settlers was Owen Brown, the stuttering

father of John Brown. I have heard it said that he never stuttered

when engaged in prayer-not because he did not pray, for he

did. Probably little mention would be made of him if it were

not for the eccentricities of his son. Nor do I now care to dis-

cuss the son at length. It is the grimmest joke of the century

that John Brown was able, by his ridiculous crusade, to throw

Virginia into such mortal terror. Had. Gov. Wise and his

people been New England Yankees, they would have drummed

John Brown out of the state to the tune of the rogue's march,

and made him ridiculous. They did not think of that. No, by

offering him pardon if he would promise not to do it again, they

brought out noble heroism, and by executing him they made

him a martyr. He is now not notorious, but famous, and they

are the laughing stock of the age, and we are not ashamed of

John Brown today. And so "his soul goes marching on."

It will certainly be fitting for the student looking into the

pioneer times to consider Hudson, not only by itself alone, but

also in its connection with the Reserve as a whole. It is to be

remembered that nearly the whole of it was peopled by men

and women of the same origin, and alike in opinions, and tastes

and habits. A bond of sympathy, therefore, made them one

people. I am led to think of this by noting that Mr. Hudson was

accustomed to make a sort of mission excursion into other

places for the purpose of promoting religious movements and

building up Christian churches. There were men in various

portions of the Reserve who were early given to labors for

every good cause, for example, Dr. Peter Allen, of Kinsman,

Dea. Meriman Cook, of Burton, Jonathan Baldwin, of Atwater,

Rev. Mr. Meriam, of Randolph, Judge Brown, of Brownhelm,

and others, whose united efforts gave unity and solidity to the

whole, and made the Western Reserve a moral and political

entity, as well as a spiritual force. Of Mr. Baldwin it is said that

when it became known that he had determined to come to Ohio,

his minister, the Rev. Seth Williston, D. D., exacted of him a

promise that he would not settle in any township where there

was a minister He came to Kingsville, where two sisters and

their husbands bought farms and made their homes. But there

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was a minister there and so Mr. Baldwin came on to Atwater,

where there was no minister. Then took place what the saga-

cious pastor had foreseen. Mr. Baldwin soon became restive

under the absence of public worship. He gathered his neigh-

bors at his own house on Sundays, read sermons and led them

in worship. It was not very long before the minister followed,

then the church. And fifty years ago, the pastor, then in At-

water (Rev. Elias Sharp) said "Dea. Baldwin was the father of

everything good in Atwater." One of his sons was afterwards

a Deacon in this (the Hudson) church. Another, after a min-

istry of seventeen years in New York city, became the first

president of Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana.

The pioneers came, mostly, if not wholly, from New En-

gland. Well, in those days postage on a single letter was 25c,

and as late as the forties postage on a letter from any point in

the state was 12½c. The decimal currency was not in use. The

coins were 61/4c, 121/2c, 25c, 50c, $1.00, and not a great many of

them. Postage was seldom prepaid, and sometimes it was not

encouraging to find a letter in the postoffice demanding 25c.

postage, and your pocket-book empty. There were no envel-

opes, and only a single piece of paper could be put into a letter.

Few of the younger people of this day, I think, could fold an

old-time sheet of letter paper so as to present it shapely and

economical of writing space. It was not till about 1850 that

postage was brought down to 5^c, then to 3^c, then to 2c, and

letters and packages were gauged by weight, and the use of

envelopes became lawful and customary.

As regards the inner character and motives of these pioneers,

probably the severest criticism that could be passed upon them

would be to say-they were much like other people. Yet, Mr.

Hudson, at least, was peculiar in his experience and purposes.

He said that he had formerly entertained sentiments of skep-

ticism, and had exerted his influence against Christianity. Hav-

ing become, however, himself a Christian, he wished to coun-

teract skepticism by exerting himself to build up the faith which

he had labored to destroy. Hence his constant and consistent

effort to establish the institutions and customs of intelligence,

virtue and religion. Naturally he would seek to ally with him-

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self those whose views and purposes were consonant with his

own. No doubt there were skeptical and even unworthy char-

acters in early Hudson. But they do not appear prominently

and are scarcely worthy of mention, only to say that they did

not exert the formative influences which constructed the ruling

features of society. It seems to me remarkable that the church

was organized within two years after the first settlement of the

township. We are told that the church was organized in 1802,

by the Rev. Joseph Badger. This man appears as a laborious

missionary on the Western Reserve and west of that at an early

date. He was a pioneer everywhere. It was he who, ascend-

ing the Sandusky river in a rude boat of his own construction,

was overtaken by nightfall before he could reach a settlement

for which he was bound. He had no food, and quaintly wrote-

"Having nothing to eat we had patience for supper." Some

time not far from 1860 the then synod of the Western Reserve,

being informed that Mr. Badger's grave, on the banks of the

Maumee, was destitute of a stone to mark it, contributed, man

by man, one dollar each for the erection of a monument worthy

of the work and character of the man.

So the church was organized. The first minister is said to

have been Rev. David Bacon, the man who controlled the settle-

ment of Tallmadge township, and illustrated there the influence

of God-fearing principle in the organizing of a community. But

the Hudson church appears not to have had an installed pastor

till 1815. Rev. Wm. Hanford. was installed August 17 of that

year, and continued in the pastorate sixteen years. He was a

man of immovable principle, earnest piety, sound judgment,

and, withal, keen intellect. The church flourished under his

hand. One incident has interested me. On the 30th of Sep-

tember, 1817, Mr. Hanford was married to a lady whom I take

to have belonged to the numerous family of Wrights, of Tall-

madge, a great family of singers. At any rate the marriage cer-

emony was performed by the Tallmadge minister, the Rev.

Simeon Woodruff. The next day Mr. Hanford did a like ser-

vice for Mr. Woodruff, marrying him to Miss Mary Granger.

The specially interesting element to me in these incidents is that

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.         327

my wife is a daughter of this Mr. Woodruff, the only surviving

member of a family of thirteen children.

The church edifice in Hudson was erected in 1820. A large

share of material prosperity is indicated by the ability to erect

so costly a building as that was. But the style of it! Peace

to the departed shades of that style. It had immense, fluted

pillars to support the roof, between which a portion of the con-

gregation could see the pulpit, circular pews with perpendicular

backs in the middle of the house, and square old pews around

the walls. At a public meeting held in it for some purpose Judge

Van R. Humphrey presided. The Judge was a stalwart six-

footer. He stood on a platform one step high and by the least

mite of a stoop he stood under the pulpit. Yet the pulpit had

been lowered three feet, as the marks of the old stairs on the

walls testified. When, afterwards, a floor was thrown across,

making a basement underneath, the window of the original pulpit

served for the new one! The pulpit and the pews had come up

to the light! The first time I entered the old church it seemed

to me as severe and uncomfortable a place of worship as the

grimmest old Puritan could desire.

It appears that one of the most acceptable ministers who

preached in that house was the Rev. Giles Doolittle, who labored

from 1832 to 1841. Thereafter he was laid aside by feeble health,

and died shortly afterwards. This church with its appointments,

and its constant maintenance of religion and education and

practical godliness, has been and is now a substantial, indis-

pensable, ever honorable element of Hudson's high character,

of its business solidity, and its prospects for future prosperity.

In 1826 came the college. The "Erie Literary Society,"

coming thus early into existence, testifies to the appreciation of

education on the part of the settlers. It appears to have been

composed of members from all portions of the Reserve, but

especially the northeastern part. A beginning was made, and

an academy was founded in Burton. But before a college

charter was procured the building erected in Burton for the use

of the academy was burned, and the impression gained prev-

alence that the place was unhealthy, and several causes seem to

have combined to lead a committee appointed to determine the

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location of the proposed college to abandon Burton and choose

Hudson. In the very month of June, 1850, in which the semi-

centennial was held, it occurred that I became a resident of

Burton, where for seven years the surviving persons who had

been interested in drawing the college to that location where my

parishioners. There I first learned about the Erie Literary

Society and the early history of the institution. I wish to say

that these things were mentioned only incidentally to me, and

that not by prominent actors in the events. Undoubtedly the

people there felt aggrieved that the college was located else-

where after all they had done, and especially hurt by the allega-

tion against the healthfulness of their locality. But their in-

terest in the cause of education was not quenched. The list of

donors of substantial sums to the funds of Western Reserve

College contains the names of Judge Peter Hitchcock, his son,

Reuben Hitchcock, also a judge, of Gov. Seabury Ford, Henry

H. Ford, George Boughton, Myron Beard, Rev. Dexter Witter.

And from this very cluster of families came the third president

of the college, the Rev. Henry Lawrence Hitchcock, D. D., the

gentlest, sweetest, purest, most godly of men, very like unto

his godly mother. All ye who knew him loved him. You

could not help it. He drew men to him and to the college, and

made himself a benediction to all who came within his reach.

But, in the first attempt to procure a charter there occurred

a marvel. Half the proposed trustees were ministers of the

Gospel. The legislature seems to have contained some men of

infidel sentiments, who determined to oppose granting a charter

under which education would be controlled by clerical influence,

and they succeeded in making the charter exclude all religious

instruction. Of course this was not acceptable. The matter was

laid before Judge Brown, of Brownhelm, by the Rev. Caleb

Pitkin, and the two went to Columbus to get a change made.

The judge afterward sent the minister home, saying that a

sinner could manage a legislature better than a saint. He him-

self remained and procured a charter which was acceptable.

The college had difficulty in procuring a president. After

some previous appointments had been made to no purpose, the

Rev. C. B. Storrs became president. He is witnessed unto as

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.        329

 

a lovable, excellent man, and satisfied the requirements made

upon him. But he was a victim of consumption, and after a

short term of office passed away and left the position vacant.

Those who read the poems of Whittier may find among them a

glowing tribute to the memory and work of President Storrs.

I cannot go into the story of the differences of opinion which

sprung up and disturbed the harmony and work of the college

in regard to the subject of anti-slavery. I once heard President

Pierce say he thought that trouble might have been averted.

Whether that be true or not, and without saying whether the

trustees were or were not over-conservative on the subject, I

wish to indorse one point of their sentiment, viz., that the

proper business of a college student is to study, get his lessons,

and recite them, thus rigidly training himself for the future, and

not go scouring the country to give half-hatched lectures. In

short, Mr. Mower, before you go into the hay-field grind your

scythe.

Though we are supposed to be dealing now with pioneers,

it would not be fair to pass by the work of President Pierce.

His was a pioneer work in the raising of endowment funds. He

was much away from home on this business. Take the mere

names and numbers of his "Record of Donations" as a skeleton,

and let your imagination clothe it with the flesh and blood of

his talking and speaking and his experiences. You follow him

all over New England, in Boston, in New York. Many a novel

is not half so interesting, nor a tenth part so instructive and

profitable.

Within these last one hundred years methods have changed.

If "Township 4, Range 10," were now to be settled and subdued,

first of all a railroad would be pushed up into it or its neighbor-

hood, and all goods and supplies forwarded over it. But the

railroad was fifty years in coming. The old-time method en-

tailed the sacrifices, hardships, high prices of imported goods,

distance from market, of which we are often told. The procure-

ment of the single article of salt, e. g., was attended with great

labor and cost of time.

But it does not follow that the method of pioneering now in

vogue is any better for the health or the virtue of the people

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330       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

than the plan of old. We live faster than the fathers lived.

Whether, on the whole, we live better, is not so easily to be

granted. It is said that some one reproached an old Greek

because he did not come of an old, aristocratic family. "Is it not

enough," he replied, "that I begin the family?"

Mr. Hudson, in his diary, gave expression to his sense of

responsibility which lay upon him in leading others into situa-

tions of peril, where they would be dependent on him for pro-

tection. This community is indebted to him for the noble char-

acter which led him to devote himself, with care and self-denial,

to the establishment of a society, laying the foundations of com-

mercial, educational, and religious stability and progress, and

caring, not for himself alone, but for his companions.

Now friends, you can hardly say, with Longfellow in his

"Haunted Houses," "There are more guests at table than the

hosts invited." You have invited by name, the memories of

"Owners and occupants of earlier dates." You are striving to

mingle their personalities, their thoughts, their principles, their

actions, with your own in these commemorative festivities.

They do not appear to your bodily senses. You do not see their

forms, nor hear their voices. You do not take them by the

hand. But you welcome the thought of them. You revere the

remembrance of their deeds, their character. "The forest pri-

meval" is long since laid low. But they who wielded the axe,

and who drove the plowshare through the virgin soil, though

they sleep in your church-yards-"in your hearts they perish

not." And they now make themselves felt in this congregation

no less sensibly than we feel each others' presence. So it is,

so be it ever with those who do something fit to be held in

remembrance. Not, indeed, in the outward incidents or condi-

tions, but in the inward essentials we do hold converse with those

who have, before us, done so well their work, and left us their

inheritance.

I understand, as well as any, that this is not a distinctively

religious occasion. I would not make it so, even if I were able.

But what do we here? We are seeking to take our place

in the on-goings of an hundred years. We are rising on the

crest of the last wave of a century, doing obeisance to those

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.         331

 

who lived a century ago, and shouting cheer to those

who shall live a century hence. No earnest man can thus put

himself and his life between the past and the future without

moving the profoundest sentiments of his soul. You must feel

yourself in the presence of the Great Power who rolls along the

billows of the stream of time. You must feel that every man

has an honorable place to fill, a great duty to perform, and a

legacy to bequeath to posterity-not a legacy, perhaps, of dol-

lars, or of acres, or of flocks and herds, but of noble thoughts,

exalted deeds and sentiments which shall contribute to the

nobleness and happiness of those who shall come after.

These are not sentiments of lamentation over the frailty of

human nature, but of exultation over the dignity of manhood,

and the grandeur of the deeds which human hearts and lives

may perform.

The world will go on, like a river to its ocean. Men will

grow better, nobler, more lofty in principle and purpose. There

is no occasion, then, to lament, but every reason to glory, while

we see that

" Other men our land will till

"And others then our streets will fill,

"And other birds will sing as gay,

"And bright the sunshine as to-day,

"A hundred years to come."

The Centennial Ode was given by Elizabeth Shaw, grand-

daughter of Rev. James Shaw, D. D., who graduated from West-

ern Reserve College in 1834.

 

THE PIONEER.

 

(BY ELIZABETH SHAW.)

The Pioneer went from the firelight that fell

On the hearthstone he loved the best,

From hand-clasp and music and Sabbath bell,

To go-where the sun goes-West.

The stars on their way from Atlantic's cold spray

O'er the proud Appalachian's crest

Stretched long fingers of light through the dusk of the night

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To point the place of their rest

In the West,

The far-away place of their rest.

The Pioneer followed the march of the spheres;

In his footprints veiled History sped;

And today, through the echoes of hurrying years,

We hear the far sound of his tread.

Clear-eyed and fearless and steadfast,

The Pioneer went to his labors:

Not fiercely, to wring with a desperate hand from reluctant

Nature

A pittance for daily needs, but with kingly tread advancing

Down the snow-paved halls of the forest, his axe-scepter raised

in command.

Storm-pruned, like the trees that he hewed, and, like, them, with

strong frame ice-armored,

Gnarled limbs that feared not the cold and skin like the bark of

a sapling,-

What wonder that maple and beech bowed in humble submission

before him ?

The fresh-hewn wood breathed its fragrance to welcome the

newly crowned monarch,

And even the bleeding stumps in his backward pathway arrayed

them

In court robes of velvet lichens to honor the tyrant who smote

them.

Triumph, perhaps, but not comfort was his in his savage do-

minion.

Famine and Fever, grim anarchists, shadowed his coming and

going;

The wolf, self-appointed Lord Chamberlain, stared through the

cracks of the cabin;

But still, with statesmanship dauntless, prophetic, the Pioneer

wrought for the future.

 

 

When Hunger and Cold through the forest old

With the wild beasts went wandering by,

• 15
 

Hudson Centennial Celebration.          333

 

When Loneliness hung like the dying Christ

Between pitiless earth and sky,

The Pioneer toiled that his children might reap

In the years of the by and by.

When stern Death left empty the log-hewn crib

Far from service of human skill,

And the sunlight cast only the shade of a cross

Athwart the rude cabin's doorsill,

The Pioneer toiled that his God might give

The harvest to whom He should will.

We garner that harvest by right of our birth,

But the world shares the fruit of his tears:

For minds that hew pathways to new realms of truth,

And hearts that faint not through long years,

And souls that dare follow the beckoning stars,

Are the heirs of the Pioneers.

Like pigeons, a-homing the years wing their way

To the silence from which they came,

And the Pioneer's story is written today

In the crimson-stained annals of fame.

The town that our fathers baptized with their blood,

Though twined with this century's birth,

Is destined to live till Time's day-star shall give

Eternity's dawn to the earth.

The blood of its chrism flows warm through our hearts

As we meet, its sweet hearth-songs to sing,

While the Future leads swift, like the stars in the East,

To the presence of Christ, our King.

 

 

The century's labors are done, and we gather from far and from

near,

As a family, scattered by day, gathers home in the gray of the

twilight.

The day was too long for our fathers; they are sleeping in quiet

green places

While we who still wake speak together of what has been done

since the morning.

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334        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

No longer the wilderness hedges our dooryard with barriers

enchanted;

No longer the fertile fields lie with tresses sleep-tangled through

ages.

The meadows of Hudson breathe "Peace," her streams murmur

"Living is giving";

Her trees, swept by wind-fingers, play the rich chords of heroic

endeavor;

The bells of her churches chime "Worship," and the bells of her

schools echo "Wisdom";

Her children play, free from all fear, angel-brooded in flower-

strewn pathways.

O blind eyes that see naught but substance, behold the fair spirit

of Hudson-

A city not fashioned by hands; jasper-piled of the souls of its

builders!

Its streets, by a century's sunshine made golden, lead outward

forever,

While a choir that our eyes cannot see chants the mystic song

of the city:-

We sing you no song of the waves in mid-sea,

Crowded close by their kin evermore,

But a song of the breakers that part from their mates

To dash out their lives on the shore.

We sing you no song of the waves in mid-sea,

Rising up, sinking down evermore,

But a song of the breakers that climb up the sands

And carve the bleak rocks on the shore;

The brave artist breakers that carve with themselves,

And vanish in foam on the shore.

 

 

On Culture's mid-ocean, with purposeless motion

The waves of life rise but to sink,

But with impulse resistless of conquest and progress

Break the waves on Humanity's brink.

They fling themselves forward with courage sublime,

They crumble grim Savagery's crest,

And they carve the high bluffs of a new world's bold shore,

• 17
 

Hudson Centennial Celebration.         335

 

As their toil-worn forms sink to rest

In the West,

The receding, elusive West.

 

The closing prayer and benediction in the morning program

was pronounced by the Rev. Newton Barrett, of Iowa City, Iowa,

who was pastor of the Hudson church fifty years ago.

At the dinner, which was held in the afternoon in the tent

upon the grounds of the Park, Hon. W. I. Chamberlain acted

as toastmaster. The toasts and responses were as follows:

"David Hudson," response by Julius Whiting, Esq., of

Canton, Ohio, whose wife was one of the granddaughters of

David Hudson.

MR. WHITING: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:-

I took my first meal in Hudson at the table of Harvey Baldwin,

son-in-law of David Hudson, and spent my first night beneath

his roof. Perhaps on or about that time the associations were

formed which I up to this time have been unable to break; at

any rate I have become reconciled, and have absorbed pretty

much all the prejudices of the Hudson family and a good deal

of pride in the family; and I am very glad to be here today to

unite with you in this centennial celebration. It is a celebration

of which Hudson may well be proud. Rarely is a town of this

size having such opportunities of developing the culture as this

little town has done. What little it has done it has done well.

It is almost ten years since the people of Hudson gathered

and made a gala day in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the

birth of the first white child born in Summit county. She had

seen the inception of the village, had lived in it and been a part

of it from her birth until that day. It is a curious coincidence

that when she died, two years later, and the friends who had

gathered to lay her with her fathers had dispersed,-upon that

very night the village was devastated by a conflagration which

eradicated almost every land mark and utterly destroyed the bus-

iness portion of the town. With the death of Anner Hudson

Baldwin departed the last of the children of the founder of the

town, and with one exception the family is now represented in

the community only collaterally.

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336       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

As we meet today to commemorate the completion of the

full round of a century since the settlement, it is fitting that we

give some thought to David Hudson, the leader of the pioneers;

the founder of the community. We may well inquire what

manner of man he was and what motives led him, a man ap-

proaching middle life, married, settled upon a farm in Connec-

ticut, to sever all bonds of custom and seek a new home in what

was then a trackless wilderness.

Men forsake their homes and seek new lands from many

causes: From hope of gain as Virginia, Maryland, and the Car-

olinas were settled; from desire for political or religious freedom,

which was the central motive of the movement that founded the

New England Colonies and Pennsylvania; from love of adven-

ture; from persecution, or from fear, as a noted writer has sug-

gested within a few days, attributing the early settlement or

Western Pennsylvania to the movement of those who desired

to escape the Revolutionary draft.

If we may expect the highest development to produce the

best types, we may look to New England to find a better class

of immigrants and a more rapid advancement than in any other

colony. While the southern colonies attracted men of all classes,

from the threadbare courtier to the convict, Connecticut owed its

early settlement to religious enthusiasts, men of austere lives

but of great courage and of the best type of the English middle

class. They were skilled in the arts of peace, but did not shrink

from the fiery ordeal of war. In their search for religious free-

dom they brought with them a fortitude to meet all hardships

and a firmness of purpose which they transmitted to their chil-

dren's children.

Descended on the paternal side from a line which had pro-

duced a great navigator, David Hudson was born in Branford,

Connecticut, in 1770, at a time when already the smoldering

discontent of the colonists was giving forth warning smoke indi-

cating the fires about to burst forth. In that colony he lived

through the period of the Revolutionary War, married and had

a family of seven children, before he engaged in 1799, with

Birdsey and Nathaniel Norton, Stephen Baldwin, Benjamin

Oviatt and Theodore Parmelee in the undertaking which

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.          337

 

brought him to the West. The causes which led to the emigra-

tion of David Hudson and many others, from the more settled

lands of Connecticut to the wilderness of Western Reserve were

largely commercial. Some four years before, Moses Cleveland

and his party had made the survey of the territory and the in-

ducements to settlers in the prospects of financial advancement

were attractive. Hudson himself after living to middle life as

a free thinker, had experienced a sense of religious responsibility

which was probably the immediate cause of his leading in per-

son the enterprise in which he had embarked. His partners were

men of gravity of thought and stern religious sentiment. He

and they were interested alike in the development of their ma-

terial interests and the propagation of religious teachings. With

Hudson, conviction meant action; knowledge, responsibility.

He had all his life been surrounded by and subjected to influences

which to his awakened consciousness became paramount.

Henceforth his bent became more and more religious. He was

always the man of affairs; always the leader, as he was the pro-

prietor; always filled with the sense of his responsibility for the

welfare of his people. He felt also, he said, "the responsibility

resting upon first settlers and their obligations to commence in

that fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom and to estab-

lish those moral and religious habits on which the temporal and

eternal happiness of a people essentially depends." He was

thoroughly consistent; his actions keeping step with his utter-

ance. From the first it was he who conducted the religious

exercises; he who early secured the services of an ordained min-

ister; he who offered his own house as a gathering place for wor-

shipers. It was by his influence and assistance that the first

church was erected. He was interested in education, heading

the petition to the Legislature which secured the charter for the

Acedemy at Burton, in 1805; a little later it was his activity and

liberality which secured to the town he had founded the location

of Western Reserve College. He gave freely to this and other

institutions of learning all his life long. It is believed that his

interest in this matter was excited primarily by his desire to

see the pulpits of the new land filled by an earnest and educated

Christian ministry.

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338       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

He was patriotic, inculcating love of country from the first

little gathering of 43 souls, on July 4, 1800, where he delivered

the address. In every undertaking he showed wisdom in coun-

sel, strength of will, and firmness of purpose; whether in the

forty days of struggle on land and water seeking his possessions,

or in averting an Indian uprising after the killing of Nickshaw

by Williams and Darrow, or through the troublesome period

of the war of 1812. He lived to see the wilderness subdued, the

country settled and prosperous, and died full of years and honors,

in 1836, leaving, as one writer has said, "A memory revered and

an example of usefulness well worthy of imitation."

Who can estimate the influence of such a life? To this day

Ohio has been honored by her sons from the Reserve, as the

Nation has delighted to honor them. For generations the pluck

and enterprise of the state had its origin with the men born here

from New England stock. They have been, and are still, the

leaders in the halls of Congress, on the Bench, at the Bar, in the

Pulpits, not only of this state, but of every state in the Union.

It was the men like David Hudson who laid the foundations

upon which these later generations have builded. It may well be

doubted if any man of his time did more than he to advance the

cause of education and morality.

Time forbids that I should recount the oft told tale of his

journeys through the wilds to the site of the village, or repeat

again the story of the early struggles of the infant community.

They are well known to you. But they will be forgotten and

lost to tradition before the forces and influences emanating from

David Hudson cease to be active for good. His life shall ever

be an example and his memory revered wherever honor and

high purpose are esteemed of men.

"John Brown" response by Judge Marvin of Akron.

JUDGE MARVIN:-It so happens that this centennial year of

the settlement of Hudson is the centennial year of John

Brown's birth. On the 9th of May, 1800, he was born at Tor-

rington, Conn. While yet a boy five or six years of age he came

here with his father's family. The boy was here for at least ten

or twelve years before moving away from the town of Hudson,

• 21
 

Hudson Centennial Celebration.        339

 

and, later, he resided here himself with his own family. As was

said by Dr. Bushnell in his address this morning, no man who

ever lived in Hudson is so widely known to the world as he.

Indeed, no man who ever lived in Summit County, I think it

is safe to say, no man who ever lived in Ohio, became so widely

known at home and abroad as John Brown. The amount

of literature which has been written about him is surprising.

Many biographies of him are to be found in public libraries.

His life has been the subject of the pen of that great French

writer, Victor Hugo. He has written his biography.

That John Brown, in his youth, was indoctrinated with the

truth of the Scriptural saying that "God hath made of one blood

all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, is

manifest from the fact that his father, not many years after the

arrival of the family in Hudson, became one of the trustees of

Oberlin College, a college that has sent out as many men and

women with fixed convictions on subjects of right and wrong

as any institution of learning that has ever been known among

men, and especially with the conviction that human slavery is

the sum of all villainies. Early in life, while yet a boy, Mr. Brown

became a member of the Congregational Church in Hudson,

and afterwards a member of the Congregational Church at

Franklin Mills, but in later life he was not a church member

though he persistently called himself, and without doubt was

a Christian man. It seems certain, however, that his ideas of the

duties of men were formed more largely by his reading the

Old Testament Scriptures than by his reading of the New Testa-

ment, for he believed in the vigorous way of bringing men to

understand the truth and to be governed by it. He believed

and acted upon the idea that the enemies of right and truth and

justice should be smitten "hip and thigh." In his autobiography

he relates, that while a boy of 15 or 16, he was alone on the road

in Virginia with a drove of cattle, and while being entertained

at a country tavern, he saw a slave boy, who, he says, was fully

as bright as himself, scourged, maltreated and abused, while he

himself was made much of by the landlord and those about him,

because of the fact that so much responsibility was placed upon

him while he was yet so young: and that imbued him with the

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340       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

feeling that of all the foulness and of all the wickedness that

ever existed under heaven and among men, the greatest was hu-

man slavery.

He undertook to do business as a business man, but with-

out success. In 1837 he called his family together and engaged

in family worship; then he required of all the boys that they re-

ligiously pledge themselves to use their utmost efforts for the

extinction of human slavery, for the enfranchisement of the en-

slaved; and he followed that with further prayer. His real, active

war upon slavery, perhaps, began with his career in Kansas. Be-

fore that he had aided in the escape of slaves; the truth is that in

this town of Hudson there were a great many depots of the under-

ground railroad in those days, and one of them was at his father's

house. His sons went to Kansas in good faith to become settlers

of that territory; it was at the time, as you all know, when that

struggle brought about by the repeal of the Missouri Compro-

mise was on, as to whether the state of Kansas should be a free

state. His children went there in the hope of making that their

permanent home. Their father followed them upon their earnest

request, leaving, however, his family in the state of New York.

While in Kansas his life is a matter of history, and there are

doubtless men now, and intelligent, well-thinking men, who dis-

agree as to whether all that John Brown did in Kansas is to

be approved. There was that execution of the five men at Potta-

wattamie. They had been the enemies of the Free State men,

had been the terror of the good men, they had been engaged

in murderous raids to put down the Free State men and to pre-

vent them from having their rights. The execution was very

summary, without any judicial process. It alienated John Brown

for the time being from many of the Free State men of Kansas.

but that it resulted ultimately in good, no man can doubt who has

read the early history of the settlement of Kansas. John Brown

it is said, believed he was called of God to make war upon slavery

as Gideon was called from his father's wine press to make war upon

the Midianites, and he thought his life was to be as secure as that

of Gideon, and in one regard he did imitate him in no small de-

gree. Gideon, it is said was the father of three score and ten

children, "For he had many wives," is the language of the Book

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.         341

of Judges. John Brown was the father of one score of children.

He had two wives, but not both at once, while Gideon had sev-

eral at one time.

John Brown remembered that Gideon when he started with

an army of more than thirty thousand men, thinned them out

by a process divinely appointed, first to ten thousand, and

then by another process to three hundred, and with that three

hundred he was able to overcome the mighty army of the Midian-

ites, and John Brown had some reason for thinking himself like

Gideon by reason of one of his achievements in Kansas. His

army was reduced to nine men and met the enemy of twenty-

one men under a leader by the name of Pate, and took the entire

twenty-one his prisoners with these nine men. He might well

think he was called of God to do this great thing. But the

thing, which above all others made John Brown famous, and by

reason of which, though for forty years his body has been "moul-

dering in the ground," "his soul is still marching on," is that

expedition in Virginia in 1859. Dr. Bushnell said this morn-

ing that it was ludicrous that the pepole of Virginia should be

alarmed; that a man, with only 22 or 23 followers should have so

alarmed Virginia, but this reminded me of the fact that I first

heard of that raid in this village, and I heard of it from a then

prominent citizen here, and he was as badly scared as any Vir-

ginian, and believed that within ten days there would be a mighty

army of fugitive slaves marching through here seeking their

way to the lake and so to get on to Canada, and he expected

bloodshed and murder to be spread all over this Western Re-

serve by those fugitives. That was in this village. No wonder

then that when Brown and his followers were actually within the

borders of their state the people of Virginia should have been

alarmed. I have already spoken of the twenty-one Virginians

whom he overcame with his nine men in Kansas; and doubtless

the Virginians at home knew something of that.

Whether John Brown was at all wise in his expedition to

Virginia may well be doubted, and yet, the children of this

world have always been wiser than the children of light. Men

who start out to do something for humanity have got to take

some chances; and John Brown imbued, without any question,

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342       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

with the feeling that it was his God-imposed duty to raise up an

army among the slaves, who should overcome their masters, made

his raid into Virginia. It is wonderful that any man should have

attempted this, and still more wonderful that he should have

accomplished anything by it. John Brown did accomplish a

great moral purpose; he stirred up the people of the United

States to a realization of the evils of slavery, in a greater degree,

perhaps than any other one person, except Mrs. Stowe in her

wonderful story of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

What John Brown did in 1859 had much to do with bringing

about the kind of sentiment which ended in the absolute extinc-

tion of human slavery on this continent. John Brown became a

martyr. No man who reads his autobiography but will believe

that he was a man of decided ambition. He was anxious to become

a famous man, and he succeded in that, as has already been said.

He became the most famous, perhaps, of the citizens of Ohio.

As the result of that he lost his life as a criminal. He was

hanged in December, 1859, and on his way to the gallows,-and

this I have not seen in any biography, but remember reading

it in the papers at the time,-he lifted up a little black child he

saw, and kissed it. When those who came to the prison to escort

him to the gallows, said "Mr. Brown, are you ready?" He said,

"I have always been ready to die." He was willing to die for his

convictions, and did die for his convicions, as the criminal dies.

But when that drop fell; when his life ended here, "he passed

through glory's opening gate and walked in paradise."

"Hudson's Out-reach or Influence; (a) Upon our Country's

Agriculture;" response by John Gould of Aurora.

MR. GOULD:-To lead the vanguard of the western onflow

and spread of civilization to blaze a trail into the heart of a great

unknown wilderness that would be beaten into a great highway

for a coming nation; to mark the outposts for a coming tide

of people of occupancy; to strike the first blow that assails the

great fortress of nature; to be the center of thought and inspira-

tion that colonizes a wilderness; that grapples with the uncon-

quered forces of earth and air; to see fair fields appear, homes

builded, churches erected, schools established, the economic arts

• 25
 

Hudson Centennial Celebration.          343

put in operation, and agriculture given an unbounded outreach,

is given to but few men. David Hudson, grand old pioneer,

was one of them, and is for us to-day our patron saint, our peer-

less hero. To him and his not less worthy compatriots we meet,

to-day this centennial of history, to offer especial honor and

tribute of thanks.

More than this, because of their coming ensued a train of

events, an expansion took place, an empire was builded that has

passed into history as the great miracle of the nineteenth cen-

tury; an agricultural out-reach, an inspiration, a something that

dominates men, carries them forward with irresistible impulse,

and is continually demanding new domains, making better the

conditions of life. Because of it all, came the results which make

us thank God that He gave it to us, to be citizens of this Grand

Commonwealth, this State of Ohio.

The swarming of the human hives of New England in 1800

to 1820, was but one form of an agricultural outreach. Rocky,

almost sterile mountain farms must be recruited in some way,

and that way was to seek new lands in the west. And so it was

this outreach of David Hudson that led him to this fair township

to found his home, and draw about him a class of men and

women whose rugged honesty, sterling worth, and fixed tenacity

of purpose we have as yet not fully comprehended, even when

viewing them from their century-away distance.

It seems to have been the good fortune of Hudson township

to have had an agricultural out-reach from the first decade of its

history. Like all new townships, with a rapidly increasing immi-

gration, and at a time when Greenbacks could not be picked from

trees, nor gold dug from the sands of Tinker's creek, the com-

munity came to be, of necessity, self-sustaining. With lands nat-

urally grass-producing, the raising of flocks and herds became at

once prominent, and we can say that from the very first even until

now, the cow has been the chief source of Hudson's income. As

has been said, the farm at first supplied nearly all needs. Food

and clothing were home-produced, and all wants from ox yokes to

sleds, from soap to straw hats, were of farm origin, and each

was the exemplification of the skill of their creators. As the

days went on there must be a surplus somewhere with which to

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344       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

purchase the few things the farm could not produce, and before

1810 David Hudson precoursed the agricultural out-reach of

the town by taking butter and cheese to Pittsburg to exchange

for articles of need. From that day on this out-reach of Hudson

and other Western Reserve towns has fed large portions of the

world with dairy produce. Later, it was a Hudson man of brain

and money, who devised the plan of syndicate cheese factories.

Seymour Straight showed it was possible to centralize, system-

atize, and make uniform the plans and workings of associated

dairy interests, a system now in almost universal practice-large

individual or co-operative control of dairy manufacture.

Indirectly Hudson has had a large out-reach in this. Her

educational advantages, colleges, academies, culture and intel-

lectual uplift have had not a little to do in molding farm life, and

its outflow of influence permeated other sections and localities,

even to distant states, The old plan of home supply has gone.

The Standard Oil Co. has taken charge of dipping candles, the

village artisan has gone, and you now buy everything ready made,

even to your ground coffee with its unknown "blends." Fall

River and Lowell have forever made motionless the hand loom

of the farm home; and to-day on the farm, the bright boy of 16,

with horses and modern machinery, supersedes the dozen men

of 1845, and these men have gone out into an out-reach beyond

Hudson, and with them was carried an influence for good, thrift,

and intelligence which would astonish one, could the uplift of

their life work be measured and here realized.

The world is full of the praises of what is known as the

Chautauqua idea, and a grand educational feature it has been

and now is, because it has brought the best of the world's liter-

ature and science to the door of the world's common people in

city and country, helping all who will, giving them the aid to

keep abreast of the thought and action of the time. But, quite

as early, in the brain of a Hudson man was originated, and by

his tact and perseverance was put in motion, what was proven

to be the expansion idea in farmers' institutes, to wit, centralized

inspiration, control of funds, selection and assignment of speak-

ers, the county plan of two to four two-days' meetings in each

county, with a carefully arranged plan of circuits, supplying

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.          345

 

speakers from a distance; giving institute dates, and, in other

words, presenting to the gathered farmers' families a prepared

feast, not, however, to the exclusion of the local man with ideas.

Out of this has grown an agricultural out-reach that no state

has ever improved upon, and last year Ohio held 274 regular

two-day institutes, and 30 independent ones, all the outgrowth

of the Hudson out-reach, evolved, perfected and put into form

and practice by your honored townsman, your chairman and

toastmaster of the day. I here do not wish to detract from the

action and work in institute development elsewhere. Institutes

in name were carried on in other states as early as in Ohio, but

they were without organized and personally directed effort, and

so remained until 1885, whereas in 1880 Ohio, under the secre-

taryship of Wm. I. Chamberlain, the plan and purpose of the

institute was brought out of chaos and the first series of county

institutes was conducted under the personal management and

control of one man as a general superintendent, a centralized

inspiration, direction and control.

In 1885 Wisconsin, under the brilliant organizing powers

of W. H. Morrison, launched his fully equipped series of insti-

tutes, but his plans were largely drawn from information sup-

plied from Ohio, closely modeled after the Hudson idea. Then

he sought in Ohio his assistant superintendent, who was there

maintained for three seasons. He also imported T. B. Terry

and W. I. Chamberlain to make circuits of institutes. Other

states caught what I can justly term the Hudson plan of insti-

tute out-reach, and in substance, the thirty or more states which

now have complete institute organization and state support, are

in the main copies of Hudson's out-reach, and when agricultural

history makes faithful record of this institute development, a

Hudson man's name shall lead all the rest.

Time forbids to trace the growth of the idea from $1,000,

expended in 1880 on 27 institutes up to some $15,000 expended

on 300 institutes in 1900. The agricultural literature in insti-

tutes and through the press has lifted up and inspired thousands,

and here I may at least mention the fact that some of it crossed

the town lines and there kindled a lesser flame, and lifted one

up to attempt better things for himself, and to cheer on others

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346      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

to help make the farm life noble, honorable and respected of all

men.

There is yet another matter in connection with this educa-

tion which Hudson has developed in these latter years, that the

agricultural world has taken cognizance of, and credited Hud-

son with, whether fully comprehended here or not. A Hudson

resident, a college-educated man, stands today at the head of the

agricultural writers and lecturers of America, and that unques-

tioned-your townsman, T. B. Terry, Esq.; and the beneficent

out-reach of his example, his voice and pen, his helpful thought

and advice, his original methods, his analysis of mode and prac-

tice, have come to thousands of homes and farms to encourage

and bless, an agricultural influence such as has come, probably,

from the life of no other man. Another Hudson man, already

mentioned in another connection, with an agricultural influence

perhaps not fully realized here, is editor of the greatest of all

the great farm papers (the Ohio Farmer) which with its edition

reaching a half million readers each week, has to do with the

moulding of agricultural thought and action in large degree; and,

weighing my words and with due credit to all, even if under the

shadow of old Western Reserve College, I venture the remark

that because of the agricultural out-reach of these two men,

the town of Hudson is known to a greater number on this con-

tinent than of any other two men the town has ever produced.

Hudson has always had a noted place in the agricultural

prosperity of the century, and for the general high intelligence

of its farmers, but its out-reach is not so much of its butter,

cheese, cows, stock and grains, as it has been its educational

influence and uplift. The one can be measured by dollars and

bushels; the other, an intellectual, broadening, expanding, ever

helpful, ever uplifting force, can only be measured as God meas-

ures by His rules and standards, and rewards His faithful stew-

ards.

What of Hudson's out-reach for the century to come?

There are no more forests to subdue, and the men who subdued

them are dust, and today is a faint attempt to render them the

honor due. The day of the independent community has passed,

and the country is now blended in a homogeneous fabric. We

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have arrived at an artificial age, when luxuries are supplanting

simple wants, and the demand for the "ready made" is blotting

out the individuality that was so distinguishing a trait in the

character of the pioneer. Still I believe that the influence of

the farm is to reassert itself, and when the education and the

culture of the farm is co-equal with that of other professions,

the farm will again be the best place upon which to be born,

to be brought up, educated and married. On it men can live,

as did our forefathers, neater to God than it is possible for men

in any other profession to live, and start from to Heaven.

When another 100 years shall have rolled around Hudson will

be found having another agricultural out-reach as valuable to

the world as that of this century. God's plans allow no back-

ward steps. The first man was a farmer, and to him was given

absolute dominion, and it was God's plan that he who produced

for, fed and clothed the world should be supreme in its control.

If he is not so today, it is because he has allowed the artificial,

added conditions of civilization to outweigh him in the mental

balance. There is a mighty force arising in the agricultural

world, in its agricultural schools, colleges, experiment stations,

and working departments of agriculture, that brings promise that

the farmer shall in mental equipment again control as God in-

tended that he should, and in that coming day not the least of

these forces of educational uplift that bring triumph will be

Hudson's agricultural out-reach.

"Hudson's Out-reach or Influence; (b) Upon Our Country's

Literary Life;" response by Prof. Clay Herrick.

PROFESSOR HERRICK: Ladies and Gentlemen:-A little

girl, who didn't live in Hudson, was asked to write an essay upon

the subject of Physiology; and this is what she wrote: "The

human body consists of three parts, the head, the chist and the

stummick. The head contains the eyes and the brains, if any;

the chist contains the lungs and a piece of liver; and the stum-

mick contains the bowels, which are five; a, e, i, o, u, and some-

times w and y."

I don't know that this story has any application to what has

been said or to what will be said; but it bears upon its face the

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mark of truth; and truth, you know, will out. There was a church

in New York City, one of those fashionable churches to which

Christianity is an utter stranger-which happened to have its pul-

pit occupied one Sunday evening by one of these impassioned old

preachers of the old school. And there was present in the bal-

cony of the church an old colored woman; and she, true to her

training, as the preacher began to bring forth his stirring periods,

became excited, and began to "get the power," as they call it

down South; and she made a good deal of noise. One of the

ushers stepped up to her and said, "Madame, this won't do; you

musn't make so much noise; you are disturbing the meeting."

"I can't help it, sah, I can't help it; I'se got 'ligion, sah !" "But,

madam," replied the usher, "This is no place to get religion!"

Now, not the most perfunctory usher in the world could ever

have said of the town of Hudson, that it was "no place to get"

an education. It is recorded of David Hudson and his sturdy

followers, that within the first twelve months after they had

begun to make way for civilization in this part of the great West,

they opened a school; within the next year they built a house

as a permanent home for that school; and during the same year

David Hudson trudged on foot and on horseback, wading across

streams and rivers, embarking on the lake in a frail boat, and

went clear to Connecticut to spend the price of more than three

hundred acres of land in the purchase of books, which he

brought back to his community to start a circulating library.

Now, Mr. Toastmaster, it would have taken no prophet in those

days to tell that a community which showed such a spirit as

that was destined to have a wide influence along literary and

educational lines. But it would have taken more than human

foresight to say how great and how broad was to be the influ-

ence of this little town. It didn't stop with the Western Re-

serve, nor with the state of Ohio; it was not confined within the

boundaries of the nation; but it leaped over ocean and sea, and

made itself felt in the ancient nations of Europe. For three-

fourths of a century a center of education, it had at one time the

college the most famous and illustrious of any west of the Alle-

gheny mountains; and for forty years it maintained, in addition

to this, several institutions for the higher education of women,

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.         349

 

and so was a pioneer in that line. All these institutions sent

out into the world hundreds of well trained men and women;

and, among others, Hudson's old college trained three United

States senators, governors for four states, ten members of the

United States congress, twenty-nine members of state legisla-

tures, and thirty-eight judges, among them being three judges

of state courts, three Chief-Justices of state Supreme Courts, and

one Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

This little town has nourished more than twenty-five authors,

who have published in the world upward of one hundred and

thirty valuable books. It has been the seat of at least two pub-

lications of national reputation. Besides an army of workers it

has sent into literary fields it has in education provided pro-

fessors for Yale and Princeton and Columbia and Andover and

other eastern institutions, and given presidents to Union, Wil-

liams and Dartmouth and several other colleges. It has sent

its workers across the great deep to bear the torch of civiliza-

tion to the people of India, China and Japan. And yes, Mr.

Toastmaster, in the memory of this generation, it has even given

to a neighboring city, in its great generosity, a ready made col-

lege, with its endowment, its equipment, its faculty and its rep-

utation all thrown in.

So much for the past; but this is not only the end of the

old century; it is also the beginning of the new century. We

stand today and look backward into the nineteenth century to

learn its lessons, to admire its heroes and heroines, and to catch

its magnificent inspiration. Then we turn and look forward

into the twentieth century, to learn and do its duties, to face and

solve its problems, to grasp and use its opportunities. The great

discovery of the nineteenth century is, that the Golden Age is in

the Future-not in the Past. My friends, that was almost an

inspired utterance, that of the old colored preacher down in

Virginia, "Bred'ren, de world do move!" Thank God, it does

move! And how could it help but move, when there have lived

such men and women as have made old Hudson famous? Gen-

eration after generation adds its contribution, and age by age

we move on toward the goal.

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And shall we, my friends, not do our part? Wendell Phil-

lips said that "To be as good as our forefathers, we must be

better than they were:"-that is, we must take the good that

they have given us, and add to it. Shall we not do that? We

take as our ideal not what our forefathers were in 1800, but what

those same forefathers would be in 1900, if they were here. We

admire and applaud Daivid Hudson of 1800. But what of the

David Hudson of 1900? If he were here today with that heroic

and persevering spirit of his he would be the pioneer still, and

he would work harder today than he did one hundred years ago,

to make this town justly famous. And shall we not follow him

in that?

Hudson has lost its college; but it still has its academy, and,

thank God, that that academy, founded on a sure basis, may live

and thrive with an equipment that will enable it to compete with

the best in the land, if we but do our part. It must become as

famous in its time as the old college was in its best days, and so

live to stand side by side with the best of the New England

academies.

"Hudson's Out-reach or Influence (c) Upon the World's

Morals and Religion," response by Rev. J. G. Fraser, D. D.

DR. FRASER: I am very grateful indeed for this generous

applause at the beginning-for it is all I expect to have! I am

reminded of a story I read not long ago, of a man in a certain

town, not Hudson, of course, who took upon himself to be ex-

ceedingly kind to traveling men who visited the town, to take

them about and show them the sights of the town, but when it

came to the matter of spending any money at all he was con-

spicuously, notably and unanimously absent. He never did any-

thing of that kind! So by and by to all the men on the road

he came to be known as "Old Generosity." A traveling man

who hadn't been in the town for some time came to town one

day, and after meeting a few friends and talking to them, he

said "By the way, where is 'Old Generosity?'" "Why," his

friends said, "hadn't you heard? He is dead." "No, I didn't

know that." "Yes, he is. Would you like to go to the cemetery

and see his monument?" "Yes, I'll go." So they took him to

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.        351

 

the cemetery to show him the grave on the center of which stood

a very plain, heavy, substantial monument bearing the inscrip-

tion "This is on me." It was the first thing that ever was "on

him !"

The theme assigned to me on the program is not exactly

the theme I have written down "black on white." That reads

"The Evangelical Out-reach of Hudson." Now that seems to

be a large enough subject for a stranger to speak upon for ten

minutes-but I want to enlarge it. I have in mind a gentleman

who was called upon unexpectedly to make an address, and

they told him he might speak upon any subject he pleased. So he

arose and modestly said that he would speak on "The Universe

and its Surroundings, with Some Remarks on Universes in Gen-

eral." But I won't take so big a subject as that. I want to

make four suggestions, however, on Hudson. I should like to

mention the Evangelical Fore-reach of Hudson; the Evangelical

In-reach; Evangelical Out-reach of Hudson.

It seems to me something wonderful in the providence of

God, in the days before Hudson had come to be such, that such

men as David Bacon and Joseph Badger, the apostle of the

Western Reserve, who had to do with every good thing in the

history of the Reserve during the opening years of this century-

providentially all had their attention focused on Hudson. That

seems to me to have been the fore-reach, the Evangelical fore-

reach in the providence of God leading towards Hudson. Then,

there must have been a wonderful Evangelical in-reach from

these earnest souls, such as President Hitchcock, to whom Dr.

Bushnell paid such a beautiful tribute this morning. There must

have been a warm, tender, Evangelical in-reach here, and the

prayer "0, that we may have the up-reach; the thoughts turned

toward God, the souls staying themselves on him and his pres-

ence in this little community 'way out here in the wilderness.'"

All that led, and led naturally and necessarily, to the out-reach.

I have been studying a wonderfully interesting and fascinat-

ing volume the last few days, the general catalogue of the West-

ern Reserve University, and I have been surprised at the names

I have found there. Such names as that of Dr. James Shaw,

who was of the class of '34; of the Scudders, who graduated in

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352      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

'50 and went as missionaries to India; Dr. Munger was a stu-

dent that same year in the college. Such names as the Indian

Missionaries, Dr. John P. Jones and the venerable Dr. J. Cham-

berlain, who spoke for the missionary world at the opening ses-

sion, and whose name was mentioned with honor at almost every

session of the Ecumenical Missionary Council, and who is

authority, seemingly, on India and everything that pertains to it.

Such names as George T. Ladd, who began his ministry in

Ohio, and, after a faithful service, going to that great place he

has occupied with such distinction and ability, in the faculty of

the Yale University. And John Henry House; and Josiah

Strong, who is with us today. I believe it was Daniel Webster

who could always speak for himself, and I suppose Dr.

Strong can speak for himself here in Hudson: and so on

with a long list. I have gathered but a few names from it. How

marvelous has been the evangelical out-reach clear to the ends

of the earth from this quiet little country town. Its line has

gone through all the earth.

"The Pioneer Man," response by Rev. James H. McKee,

of Aurora.

MR. McKEE: I have been wondering while sitting here

why I should be called upon to respond to this sentiment, for

I am not a son of Ohio, but a son of the Empire State recently

transplanted to the Buckeye State,

And yet in the three years' residence, your soil has been so

congenial that I seem to have taken root in it and so grown

down into it that I have found myself greatly interested in the

old pioneers and their work. In your immediate surroundings

lived some of the men who helped to build and make Aurora

what it is today, and in studying their history and their work I

have found myself interested also in the history and work of

those who at the same time in adjoining towns were laying foun-

dations for the moral, social and economic conditions which you

recall today with so much pleasure and pride.

The Pioneer Men are those who, while making the most of

their surroundings, are on the lookout for and ready to venture

in search of large opportunities lying somewhere in the unknown.

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.         353

 

The unknown has always had and will always have for thinking

minds a peculiar fascination. It was this which led Henry

Hudson in the "Half Moon" to look out toward the new world

three centuries ago, and, turning the prow of his vessel westward,

discover the beautiful Hudson River in New York State and

perpetuate the discovery with his name. A century later there

was another Hudson, a pioneer, somewhere in New England,

carving out for himself and his children a home in the new world.

Another one hundred years passes and it shows us a pioneer

coasting along the shores of the great lakes, up the Cuyahoga

River to plant here what has grown into your beautiful village,

and which perpetuates the good name and deeds of him whose

memory you cherish and revere today, David Hudson. And

doubtless in some place now unknown, in entirely new surround-

ings, record will be made 100 years hence of the pioneer work

of David Hudson's descendants who are now looking out for

something lying just beyond, that they may enter into and de-

velop. This was the thing which characterized the Pioneer Men.

We hear often a great deal about social conditions and sur-

roundings, and men are often excusing their short-comings

because of their environment. Think one moment. What did

these old pioneers do with their environment? Could you think

of more untoward circumstances than those in which they often

found themselves? And yet in that environment they planted

schools and colleges, built churches, opened up and developed

magnificent farms and on them reared sturdy, cultured, helpful

sons and daughters.

If this day we shall learn the lesson that in a large sense we

are all pioneers, or should be, developing methods by which to

do something for the betterment of humanity and thus perpet-

uate the work of the fathers whose names and fame you recall

today, our gathering here will not have been in vain. One hun-

dred years ago this day Colonel Ebenezer Sheldon, a pioneer

settler of Aurora, with his family, were making their way through

the then wilderness roads of Pennsylvania with their faces

toward the new home on the Western Reserve, and on the nine-

teenth of this month we will gather in our Town Hall to com-

memorate with suitable service the centenary of the coming of

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354      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

that family to Aurora. The development of Aurora runs par-

allel to that of Hudson, and in the growth of each town there

has not been wanting a spirit of mutual helpfulness.

A little time ago my attention was called to a subscription

list still extant, secured by the Rev. John Seward for the building

and endowing of the Western Reserve College. And what kind

of a list do you think it was? It was one in which the amount

set opposite each name was represented in farms, in acres of land,

in cattle, in horses, in bushels of grain, not in dollars and cents.

For real benevolence, heartiness of giving, it would be hard

in these days to match that old subscription list. These pio-

neer men were ready to make sacrifices, to give farms, the best of

their stock, grain from their newly cleared land, in order that

their children might enjoy the advantages of an educational in-

stitution of a high order, and as a result that beacon light for this

and surrounding communities, Western Reserve College, was

erected.

There results this thought. We are pioneers and one hundred

years from now men will be looking over the records to see

what we have done in our environment, and if there should be

any, with these magnificent examples coming down to us from

the century past, disposed to excuse themselves in their short-

comings because of environment let them con again the history

of the pioneer men. If the fathers in their century were able to

carve out such a magnificent inheritance and transmit it to us,

we in our century should prove ourselves worthy of the trust

and transmit an untarnished and improved inheritance to those

who will review our record at the next centennial.

"The Pioneer Women," response by Miss Mary A. O. Clark

of Collamer.

Miss CLARK:-I call to your loving remembrance the moth-

ers and maidens who journeyed thither through the wilderness,

on horse back or in ox carts, who forded rivers, who camped

under the open sky, and baked their bread by the camp fire.

Though sickness and danger were often their traveling

companions, and at their journey's end a wilderness yet unsub-

dued received them with scant welcome and hard conditions,

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.         355

 

yet, even so, strength came at need. Womenly heroism, resource

and unsuspected ability honored the drafts made by love and

necessity. Did a rattlesnake coil itself on her hearth or door-

step, or even creep for warmth into the trundle-bed, your pio-

neer mother nerved herself to a courage she had never before

known, seized ax or fire tongs, and dispatched her enemy.

She used to tell you, when you were little children and she

the gray-haired grandmother, of the dark and lonely forest

through which she once rode for her own life and that of her

baby in her arms. The wolves were howling in hot pursuit,

and she urged her horse to a mad flight toward the heavenly

glimmer of the tallow dip in the window of her log cabin home.

Grandmother's stories of wolves and Indians were better than

fairy tales, and till you grew up you would have said her early life

was a big book of adventure. You came to know that there

were also privation and sickness, cold and loneliness, which she

bore with fortitude and patience, and for which she received

compensating gifts from heaven in a character purified and

strengthened.

Fashion exacted little of the settler's wife. Though she

wore her own home-spun and made by hand every garment worn

by the family, yet we may remember the home-spun raiment like

the wilderness garb of the Israelites, and though machines were

unknown, there were neither tucks nor ruffles nor furbelows.

Besides, executive ability was developed to wonderful pro-

portions. I remember to have read of one woman, who, with her

daughters, took a fleece of wool, cleansed, dyed, spun, wove and

made of it a coat for a volunteer soldier, and did it all in twenty-

four hours.

Pioneers came to the new country not to idle, but to work,

and I do not know of a picture which would better illustrate

the genius of frontier life, than that of one of your own pioneer

women who rode on horseback all the way from New England

with her little flax-wheel tied on her saddle behind her. Have

some one paint for you the picture of that New England girl

as she emerges from the forest, and, sitting erect on her horse,

steps out into the clearing. A girl with a fearless, resolute face,

and behind her, like Santa Barbara with her tower, or St. Cecelia

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356      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

with her organ, paint the little distaff and wheel, mother of

nineteenth century spindles, and let that picture be to you and

your children a sign of the hardihood and industry which were

brought to the Western Reserve in early times.

Also remember the mothers of your pioneer women who

sometimes, in advanced age, came with their children, and passed

the remainder of their days far from the comforts of their for-

mer homes. And never forget to mention in your annals the

plucky mother who came from Connecticut to visit her daughter;

came alone, riding a two-year-old colt, and who, after a year's

visit "returned by the same conveyance."-A remarkable experi-

ence for the colt as well as his mistress. I am sorry history drops

the veil on his after life. I am sure if he lived to "grow up" he

must have been the Ulysses of the pasture, sage at least even

though "sway-backed."

With baking, brewing, weaving, spinning and sewing, it would

appear that the life of the settler's wife was reduced to wearisome

utility, and yet, fruits of inspiration were open and at hand even

in those early days.

Have you ever retreated from civilization for a little while

and camped and played at gypsy in the forest, or have you ever

at night stepped out from your own door, and while the world

about you were sleeping, have you stood alone under the solemn,

silent stars, and let the cool air take you in its arms and caress

you? If you have done this with a heart open to hear, you have

heard voices which are dumb at other hours, and you can imag-

ine what came into the soul of many a woman in whose thoughts

silence and loneliness ploughed deep and deeper channels.

I have read with interest the sketches of the pioneer women

of Hudson. I am impressed by the fact that the Bible was an

important factor in their lives. They may have been under-

learned in literary or higher criticism, but the precepts of the

Holy Word, its poetry and its mystic metaphors sank into their

hearts and became the source of the mental and moral stamina

of those early times.

To the Bible was coupled the New England primer, especi-

ally the catechism at the end of the book. For the first two

decades of the century this was used in school, church and home,

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.          357

 

and only after the second generation of settlers was the practice

of catechising discontinued. Apropos of this, my mother-who

taught a primary school here in Hudson in 1836-used to relate

a story.

A good old deacon came to visit her school one day and on

being asked to say a few words, he begged the privilege of

asking the children questions from the catechism. It was not

taught at that date in her school, and the teacher sat, smiling,

back in her chair, and let the deacon work out the examination

for himself. He proceeded down the row of children drawn up,

toes to a crack, and began: "How many persons are there in

the Godhead?" The children looked in consternation at the

teacher. They had not the faintest idea of the answer, and

down the line of mortified youngsters the good man pursued

his question.

At the very foot of the class stood a wee mite of a girl, her

eyes like stars, and a look of confident expectation on her face.

At last, then, the humilating defeat was to be turned! The little

miss nearly tilted herself out of balance, as she bent forward

to look down the line and note the approach of her moment of

triumph.

"Clarissy," began the catechist, "How many persons are

there in the Godhead?"

"Twenty-six," came the answer clear and prompt as the little

maid drew herself up to her tallest, and shot a look of triumph

down the discomfited row. The number of letters in the al-

phabet was in her mind, and as one of the most important facts

she knew it must of necesssity be the answer to the most impres-

sive question she had ever been asked.

There was a value set upon education by the pioneer mother

which almost amounted to reverence. That one of her sons

should be educated for the ministry was the darling wish of her

pious heart. For this she was willing to work and economize

beyond the limits of strength. Western Reserve College bears

record that it holds in grateful remembrance the deeds of kind-

ness, the encouragement and inspiration received from those

noble women.

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The pioneer's wife was always versed in the care of the sick

and in the use of simples, while some earned even from the In-

dians the title of "Good Squaw. Heap good doctor." In your

own chronicles appears the honored name of one who was

driven to her husband's medical library to slake her thirst for

reading. It would have been dull pastime for many of us, but,

without aiming at such an accomplishment, this woman became

a skilled nurse and undiplomaed practitioner.

There was scope for services of nurse and doctor. Malig-

nant fevers and consumption exacted a grim tribute from the

early settlers. Fever and ague became second nature, and it is

said the quinine bottle was passed after each meal.

My mother once asked after the health of a neighboring

family. The small boy interrogated responded cheerily, "0, we're

all well, thankee." "Why," exclaimed my mother, "I thought

you were all sick with ague?" "0, yes," said the boy, "we've

all got the agy, but somehow we've had the agy so much we don't

call it bein' sick.'

One never knows when to stop burrowing among the rec-

ords of a past age, which had so vital a connection with the

present. The student of human history delights to consider

the growth of character under strenuous conditions and trace

formative influences not only through one generation, but

descending ones, and to note the transference and modification

of type from parent to child. But the unprofessional heir of his-

tory sees not the science and philosophy of life, but with a throb

of gratitude exclaims, "These were my forebears, who wrought

and suffered and endured for the sake of children and children's

children, and this fair land."

Listen to a parable of the noble trees which shade your

homes, of which you are so justly proud. Think you they owe

their growth to the influences and environment of the present?

No, earth, air and sky whisper to them traditions of the prim-

eval wood, the mother forest, wind-swept, star-crowned. In

solitude and shadow its mighty trunks were reared heavenward.

The storms swayed them and shook them, but sent their roots

firmer into the soil. Age and frost colored their tops blood red,

or sunshine yellow, and November sighing through their "dim

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and cloistered aisles" fluttered their leaves to earth. Winter's

snow enveloped them. The wild things of the woods sought

protection under their branches, and the Indian skulked behind

them. Still spring failed them not, but even in the wilderness

came with gentle step and smiling face and brought hope and

joy and God's Easter each year. So they grew and drank the

sunshine and the air, and stretched their arms to nesting birds.

In the hollows of their trunks squirrels made their home and

wild bees stored their honey. Cool mosses covered their roots

and shrouded their trunks when, at last, their life having been

lived, they fell and crumbled back to the fertile soil.

Not one of the grand or gentle forces which dominated

their lives was lost. It went on into other forest life. Listen,

and you shall know these academic groves hold their traditions

as well as we. The winds chant their ancient battle peons, and

the birds are caroling their lyrics. They succeed to a grander,

more symmetrical growth because they are standing on parent

soil, enriched by the life of the mother forest of long ago.

"The Churches of Hudson and their Ministers," response

by Rev. Josiah Strong, D. D., of New York.

REV. DR. STRONG - Fellow-citizens, neighbors and friends:

-Perhaps I should say brothers and sisters, for we are all the

children of Moth Hudson to-day; own children or step-children

or adopted children; and it is easy for us to speak praises of our

mother, especially in a family gathering. Let us congratulate

each other on the beauty of the day, as perfect, I think, as any

that ever dawned during the century that we celebrate, and I

am very sure no sun during all that century has arisen on Mother

Hudson more beautiful than she is to-day, and we love to speak

of her many virtues.

Some years ago I was speaking in a little village on the lake

shore, a few miles west of Cleveland, and at the close of the

address an Englishman came to me and said, "I, too, am a public

speaker; I used to speak in London, and people have followed

me from one 'all to another 'all and they said to me, 'Why don't

you go to Hamerica, you would be happreciated in Hamerica,' and

so I came to Hamerica and I 'ired a 'all, but nobody came to

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'ear me, and I spoke in the hopen hair, but nobody came to

'ear me. Why, sir, I am a poet, and I am a philosopher, and I

am a horator, a hauthor, and it is a houtrage and a shame that

people won't come to 'ear such a man as I ham." It occurs to

me to-day that our good Mother Hudson to-day is as versatile as

our English friend; and, judging from the remarks I have al-

ready heard upon her many virtues, we are sure that, unlike

him, she is appreciated.

I was told this morning that I was to speak a few words

concerning the churches and ministers of Hudson. Surely a

long text for a ten minutes' sermon. He who organized the

first church in Hudson was that apostle of the Western Re-

serve, to whom reference has already been made, the

Rev. Joseph Badger, who on the eighth day of Septem-

ber, 1802, organized the church whose house of worship once

stood on the corner where the town-hall stands to-day. Joseph

Badger, notwithstanding all the hardships of frontier life, lived

to the green old age of 90 years. Following him came David

Bacon. He had gone to Detroit but could not find there two

Christians to organize into a church. There was only one. He

found a church already organized in Hudson, and he be-

came a general missionary in this region.     Years ago,

when, as Home Missionary Secretary of the State of Ohio, I

used to travel in easy cars from one end of the state to the other,

perhaps going to sleep in Cleveland and waking up in Cincin-

nati, I felt almost ashamed of myself that I could perform the

duties of my office so easily when I remembered how David

Bacon tramped back and forth twice to Connecticut and back,

once through the snows of winter. And when he lived here

for a few years, from 1804 on, there were in the little log

school-house of Hudson two tow-haired boys-one of them

Leonard Bacon, the illustrious son of David Bacon, and the

other, John Brown. The next minister was Rev. John Seward,

who was for 32 years pastor in the adjoining town of Aurora.

During the early part of his pastorate there he used to supply

the church in Hudson every other Sunday, hence we make

mention of him in this illustrious list of ministers. He spent

his latter days in Tallmadge, and I remember that on the oc-

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.          361

casion of a celebration there, perhaps their semi-centennial, when

much had been said concerning the Tallmadge church and con-

cerning Congregationalism in general, he was called upon to

make the concluding prayer. Perhaps some of you remember

that he was not a Congregationalist, but a Presbyterian. In

his prayer referred to he said: "We thank Thee, Lord, that

it is our privilege to be Congregationalists or Presbyterians or

anything else that we please," to which no doubt we all to-day

say Amen. Following John Seward came the Rev. William

Hanford, who served this church sixteen years-the longest

pastorate in the history of the Congregational Church of Hud-

son. Mr. Hanford was identified with all the good works in the

community. He was something more than a preacher. Our

well known chairman to-day, who has done so much for the

agriculture of this state, was not the first man in Hudson who

fertilized his fields with his brains. William Hanford bought

a little farm and built a house where our honored fellow-towns-

woman, Miss Metcalf, lives to-day. He tilled that farm him-

self and made it a model long before your own, Mr. Chair-

man, was ever called a model farm. His became the model of

the farms round about and men came to see and to learn. Fol-

lowing Rev. William Hanford came Reverend Giles Doolittle,

whose pastorate was not long, but fruitful. I recall very well

his widow, and his daughters were still living here when my

father moved to the town in 1852. Then followed Rev. Mason

Grosvenor, about 1840. Then Reverend John C. Hart succeeded

him, from 1843 to 1851. He was known as an exceptionally able

sermonizer. He found the church divided over the slavery con-

troversy. Some had withdrawn and were worshipping in what

was known in my boyhood as Ellsworth's Hall. He left the

church reunited. Following J. C. Hart came Rev. Newton

Barrett, who served the church from 1851 to 1855, and we to-

day have the privilege of meeting him here in his hale old age

- in his eighty-eighth year. I want to pay tribute to his hon-

ored wife. I had good occasion to remember her with grat-

itude, for I recall that one day my brother and I had run away

from home to play down at the brook, and Mr. Barrett's two

sons, Edward and Frank, both of whom entered the ministry,

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went with us. In our fun we all tumbled into the brook and

got soaking wet and I was afraid to go home and show myself

to my mother. So we betook ourselves to the parsonage and

Mrs. Barrett, in the largeness of her heart, put us all to bed

in order to dry our soaking clothes- and then kept our secret.

The next minister was Rev. George Darling, who also is with

us to-day, who was pastor for fifteen years- from '58 to '73;

the longest pastorate in the history of the church with the

single exception of that of William Hanford. If Mr. Darling

needs a monument, it is standing in brick and mortar on yonder

hill, and its spire is seen from all the countryside. Most of us

remember the old church from which we migrated to the new

one. May I be permitted a personal reference in connection

with one sermon I can never forget, which was preached by

him in that old church? The text that morning was, "Go for-

ward and see the Salvation of God"- the word which was spoken

to Moses when the children of Israel were hemmed in by moun-

tains on either side, the Egyptians behind them and the Red

Sea before them. There seemed for them no escape, and yet

there came the word, "Go forward and see the salvation of

God." They went forward, and as they obeyed, the waters be-

fore them opened. That was the line of thought and it pro-

foundly impressed me. I was then a lad thirteen years old.

There had been pressed on my conscience a certain duty, the

acceptance of which seemed as difficult as crossing the Red Sea.

That Sabbath afternoon I said to myself, "Though I cannot

see how the acceptance of this duty will bring deliverance, I

will go forward and do it," and by God's grace I saw His sal-

vation. And I am glad to-day to greet you, my father in Christ,

as your son Timothy.

Following George Darling came Edward Root, who had

but a short pastorate, and whose son distinguished himself in

Yale college, and has since written an able book. Then fol-

lowed Rev. T. Y. Gardner, a Saint John in character, beloved

by all who knew him. We should have been glad to meet him

here to-day, but he has joined the "great cloud of witnesses."

Then came Rev. A. B. Cristy, followed by Rev. Charles W.

Carroll, whose face gladdens us to-day, and who is remembered

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.          363

 

by so many of those present with gratitude and affection. Then

Rev. Charles Small and then the present pastor of the church,

whom you know very much better than I. Time fails me to

speak of the other churches in the community, which have done

their portion of the work in impressing Christian character upon

the citizens of Hudson. But let me refer at least to two rec-

tors of the Episcopal Church-Rev. Mr. Fairchild, a man of

great worth, remembered by all of the older citizens in the com-

munity, and the Rev. Mr. Garrett, remembered by the younger

generations. His heart was as big as his body, or I might rather

say, his heart was as big as the township- five miles square.

We remember him to-day with affection. I can also only men-

tion the facts that Methodist preachers and exhorters riding on

the circuit preached in Hudson while the century was yet in

its teens. The church which was organized here as the result

of their labors, was blessed by some powerful revivals of re-

ligion. Conference appointed to the Hudson charge several

ministers of ability and marked spiritual power. Prominent

among these were the Reverends Dillon Prosser, G. W. Ches-

brough and Harvey Henderson. A few years ago, however,

owing chiefly to deaths and removals, the church became small

and at last disbanded, most of the members uniting with other

churches in the town.

But my time has already expired. Permit me to remark,

in conclusion, it is natural for us, and especially the young

men and women of to-day, to say, "Surely there were giants in

those days." Let me say to the young men and young women

of the Academy that "new occasions teach new duties." We

live in the midst of new conditions to-day which have brought

new problems and which demand new wisdom. I believe that

the twentieth century will present more problems than the cen-

tury which is now drawing to a close; and if these churches of

Hudson will recognize their present opportunities and will solve

the great problem of the country church, they will solve it not

simply for themselves, but for twenty thousand other country

communities in the United States; and one hundred years from

to-day my successor who speaks of the churches of Hudson dur-

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364      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

ing the twentieth century will need many hours to tell you of

their work and of their influence.

"Hudson in the War of '61," response by Hon. C. F. Seese,

of Hudson.

MR. SEESE: My friends, I have no apology, but I stand to

fill the place of another. I ask the toastmaster to be as good as

his word in my case and call me down, if I talk longer than ten

minutes. I suppose that he, among others, thought that I

could fill the place, largely on account of my love for the soldier

in the war of '61-'65, and I wish to confess if that was his thought

that it was not a mistaken one. When John Brown was being

taken to execution, the 2nd of December, in '59, he handed to

the guard a paper, on which was written in substance, "I am now

fully convinced that the crimes of this guilty land cannot be

purged away without blood"; and that there was much shedding

of blood many a soldier, today, even, who listens, can testify.

Hudson is proud of her David Hudson. Hudson has always

been proud of her ancestry; has always been proud of her col-

lege; has always been doting on her educational advantages, but

I am here to say that Hudson is not less proud of her glorious

record in the war of '61. From the buildings on the hill, the

grand old college, the Western Reserve, there went at least

one hundred and fifty men, one hundred of whom were graduates,

I may say scholarly men who took up arms for what they knew

in their hearts to be right. And I want to say here now, that

education and patriotism have always gone hand in hand, and

side by side, and heart to heart for better citizenship. And from

without the walls of that college in the vicinity of Hudson and

Hudson township, there went another 150 men to carry the stars

and stripes, not for the north, not for the south, but for the north

and south together. Today we stand beneath the folds of the

grand old flag largely because more than 250 men went from

Hudson with many others from all over this great nation, to fight

for that flag. I want to say to the boys and girls of today that

we have no grander duty than to applaud the soldier, than to

honor him for having gone to war and made it possible for us

to live in this grand, good, united country. It was for us that

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Hudson Centennial Celebration.        365

 

they went from their books, and from their fields, and we must

learn that grand good lesson that should the time ever come

when the scholar today must say "I go for my country's sake"-

that he take up arms to fight for what he feels to be right, as

did the men and boys from Hudson and vicinity. They fought

well. They offered their lives and I have all honor for those

who gave their lives on the battle-field, but I don't think any

more of the soldiers who lie on the hills of Arlington or Ten-

nessee or Gettysburg than I do of the soldiers who listen to me

now. He offered his life-he took his chances on the field of

battle; one staid and one came back, and I want to say that it is

sufficient epitaph to write "he was a soldier." There are men

today who think very little of the soldier, but I for one wish to

give my voice and life and my pledge that so far as I am con-

cerned nothing is too good for the man who offered his life that

I might live. Many of the soldiers have come to the end of life;

many of them have ascended one side of the hill and have gone

down the other side. They have at last come to the foot of the

hill and the sun has gone down in every case in a golden glow.

The heavenly city lies just beyond. I wish to say to every man

of the Grand Army of the Republic "Go in through the pearly

gates, Grand Army, the beautiful pearly gates."

The exercises of the evening were held in the Congrega-

tional Church and consisted of a vocal and instrumental concert,

followed by an address on "The Coming Century," by Rev.

Josiah Strong, D. D., of New York, the distinguished divine,

writer and orator. His address was most thoughtful and schol-

arly, but as it did not pertain to the history of Hudson we nat-

urally omit it.

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