JOHN ELBRIDGE HUDSON. 559 



At the time of his death, — on the first day of October last, suddenly, at 

 the railroad station in Beverly, five minutes before he was to take his 

 train for his daily tasks in Boston, — he was a little over sixty-one years 

 of age, having been born in Lynn August 3, 1839. He was a man of a 

 very handsome and impressive presence, tall, large, with a massive head, 

 and an expression in his face of quiet dignity, strength, and composure 

 which truly reported the quality of the inward man, and attracted a re- 

 spect and confidence that were never disappointed. 



Hudson's ancestry runs back to the very early days of the Massachu- 

 setts Colony. At his own birthplace of Lynn, the earliest immigrant of 

 his family had settled, — Thomas Hudson, — about 1630. It is said 

 that the first iron works in the country were established on his land, at 

 the head of navigation, below the ford, on the Saugus River. Nine years 

 a^o our associate presented to his native city an iron kettle, the first 

 casting made at these works, just two hundred and fifty years before. 



His father was John Hudson, of Lynn, and his mother Elizabeth Chase 

 Hall Hilliard, of Cornish, New Hampshire. Through her Mr. Hudson 

 was descended from two clergymen, her great-grandfather and her grand- 

 father, — one the Rev. Dr. David Hall, a graduate of Harvard in 1724, 

 and for sixty years minister of the First Church in Sutton, Massachusetts, 

 and the other the Rev. Samuel Hilliard, "a pioneer in Universalism, and 

 a soldier of the Revolution, serving at Bunker Hill and Bennington." * 

 Mr. Hudson himself was brought up as a Unitarian, and although not a 

 regular attendant upon any church, was a member of the Unitarian Club 

 of Boston. 



Educated at the public schools of Lynn, Hudson provided himself with 

 whatever other special fitting for college was needed. He entered Har- 

 vard in 1858, being a little older than the average of his class; took 

 distinguished rank as a scholar and graduated in 1862 at the head of his 

 class; became at once a tutor in Harvard College, where for three years 

 he taught Greek, Latin, and Ancient History; and for two years of the 

 same period was a member of the Harvard Law School, where he gradu- 

 ated in 1865. 



His work as a tutor gave great satisfiiction, and he would have been 

 welcomed as a permanent member of the teaching force at the College. 

 But, with a sound instinct as to the character and reach of his own powers, 

 he chose the world of affairs. As a scholar and a teacher he would, un- 



* Memoir by George V. Leverett ; The New-England Historical and Genealogi- 

 cal Register, LV. 136. 



