Ohio History Journal

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Samuel A

Samuel A. Hudson's Panorama

Of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

 

By JOSEPH EARL ARRINGTON*

 

 

 

John Banvard and John Rowson Smith were the pioneers in

applying the panoramic art form of enlarged and continuous views

to the western river system.1 Samuel A. Hudson followed close be-

hind them with his panorama of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the

first to picture the majestic Ohio. He had earlier created such a

panorama of the Hudson River,2 and later was to make one of the

Gold Regions in California.3

The story of this artist has remained unknown, though he came

from an old and prominent New England family. Samuel Adams

Hudson was born February 13, 1813, at Brimfield, Massachusetts,

the son of Samuel Hitchcock and Miriam (Adams) Hitchcock.4

In 1823, when Samuel was ten years old, his father died, leaving a

family of eleven children. This son and two of his younger brothers,

William H. and George H., chose tailoring as their occupation,

adopted "Hudson" as their new family name (in 1836, at Sturbridge,

Massachusetts),5 and      became    interested  in  art as a     congenial

* Joseph Earl Arrington of New York City is the author of other articles on

Mississippi River panoramists, among them Leon D. Pomerede and Samuel B.

Stockwell.

He wishes to thank the many persons along the two rivers and along the exhibition

routes of the panorama who generously cooperated in furnishing the information

which made this article possible.

1 See John Francis McDermott, "News Reel--Old Style, or Four Miles of Canvas,"

Antiques, XLIV (1943), 10-13; Boston Evening Transcript, September 12, 1839.

2 Hanington's Dioramas, a playbill dated Worcester, Massachusetts, June 25, 1851.

Copy in the library of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester.

3 Boston Mail, April 4, 1849; Boston Journal, April 7, 1849.

4 Mrs. Edward Hitchcock, comp., The Genealogy of the Hitchcock Family

(Amherst, Mass., 1894), 292.

5 Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, List of Persons Whose Names

Have Been Changed in Massachusetts, 1780-1892 (Boston, 1893), 79; Vital Records of

Sturbridge, Mass. to the Year 1850 (Boston, 1906), 218.

?? JOSEPH EARL ARRINGTON 1957