Founding
city in Summit County, Ohio
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Hudson is a city in northern Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 23,110 at the 2020 census. It is a suburban community in the Akron metropolitan area. John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery here and the city later became part of the Underground Railroad. The Village of Hudson and Hudson Township were formerly two separate governing entities that merged in 1994.
The city is named after its founder, David Hudson, who settled there from Goshen, Connecticut, in 1799, when it was part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. The village of Hudson, located in the center of Hudson Township, was incorporated in 1837. In Hudson, David Hudson built the first log house in Summit County, Ohio. There is a marker at the intersection of Baldwin Street and North Main Street (Ohio State Route 91), on the right when traveling east on Baldwin Street. The marker is embedded in the west face of the boulder.
Hudson, which had a distinctly New England character from its early settlers, was the home of Western Reserve College and Preparatory School, founded in 1826 by David Hudson among others. It was spoken of as the "Yale of the West". The college moved to Cleveland in 1882 and later, as Western Reserve University, merged with the Case Institute of Technology to form the modern Case Western Reserve University. The Yale-inspired red brick buildings are now the Western Reserve Academy. The Loomis Observatory was built in 1838 and is the oldest observatory in the U.S. still in its original location.
The Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad began service to Hudson in 1852. In 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln spoke to about 6,000 people for 2 to 3 minutes from the last train car at the old Hudson Depot, near the south end of College Street. The railroad ended passenger service at Hudson in 1965. A former train station (built in the 1910s) that was located near the intersection of West Streetsboro and Library Streets was demolished in 2013.
East of Morse Road, there is an unfinished Clinton Air Line Railroad bridge (over Hurricane Creek near the power line from Morse Road to W. Prescott Road).
There was a fire on the west side of Hudson's Main Street in 1892. The fire destroyed the buildings between Park Lane and Clinton Street. A. W. Lockhart's saloon and the Mansion House [Hotel] burned. The Hudson-born Pennsylvania coal mine owner James Ellsworth assisted in the rebuilding of Main Street after the street had been destroyed by fire in 1903. Ellsworth also refinanced the bankrupt Western Reserve Academy, housed on the former campus of Western Reserve College, which had been closed from 1903 until 1916.
In 1882, Gustave H. Grimm established the G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Company to build and sell corrugated tin-pan evaporators for use in maple syrup production. That area, now called "The Evaporator Works", is on the south of Ravenna Street and just east of Ohio Route 91.
The Hudson Clock Tower was built in 1912 by James Ellsworth who was born in Hudson in 1849. The original clock movement was supplied by the E. Howard Clock Company of Boston. The energy from 3000-pound weights powered the movement of the clocks and Westminster chimes. The town marshall was responsible for entering the tower every few days and winding (lifting) the weights.
Lincoln Ellsworth was the son of James Ellsworth. Lincoln Ellsworth is the only Hudsonite on a U.S. postage stamp. The Ellsworth Mountains are named after Lincoln Ellsworth. Lincoln was born in Chicago and lived in Hudson when he was a child. Lincoln was awarded two Congressional Gold Medals.
In 1941, John F. Morse, Jr. establish the Morse Instrument Company (later renamed Morse Controls), in Hudson. The company manufactured aviation, automotive, and maritime devices, and by 1969, employed over 600 individuals, with annual sales of $12 million. The plant closed in 2020.
From 1957 until the late 1980s, General Motors had a factory of almost one thousand workers in Hudson that built crawler tractor earth-moving equipment. The factory was beside and east of Ohio State Route 91 and it was south of Terex Road. The original 1958 factory had 660,000 square feet. In 1961, GM added 340,000 square feet for a total of 1 million square feet of factory. In 1970, GM renamed their earth-moving equipment division as Terex. Currently Jo-Ann Stores uses most of the former GM factory. Hudson had an airport from mid-1920s until 1957, known as the Hudson Mid-City Airport, near the former General Motors Euclid Division.
On November 28, 1973, a large area of the village, "roughly bounded by College, Streetsboro, S. Main, and Baldwin" streets, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Hudson Historic District. The historic district was expanded on October 10, 1989, to also include the area "roughly bounded by Hudson St., Old Orchard Dr., Aurora St., Oviatt St., Streetsboro St., and College St. to Aurora (street)". In addition to the Hudson Historic District, there are several additional properties in Hudson listed on the Register. The City of Hudson came about in 1994 when voters approved the merger of Hudson Township and Hudson Village, which had previously been two separate governing entities.
In July 2003, Hudson received over 17 inches (430 mm) of rain from three storm events within 24 hours. Hudson had flood damage within all its three watersheds ... Mud Brook, Brandywine Creek and Tinker's Creek. The Brandywine Creek Watershed experienced the most flood damage in 2003. Two men drowned in an underground parking garage of a condominium complex on July 21, 2003. State Routes 91 and 303 flooded where the highways dip low to pass under the train tracks and the highways were closed by 7:40 PM on July 21.
Ohio's Western Reserve "was probably the most intensely antislavery section of the country". Hudson, with the Reserve's first college, was for a time its intellectual capital. The founders of Hudson were abolitionists, although founder David Hudson favored the soon-to-be-discarded strategy of "colonization": sending free Blacks "back to Africa". Another founder, Owen Brown, father of John Brown, also from Connecticut, was a fervent abolitionist. The latter, who arguably did more to end slavery in the United States than any other person, grew up and was educated in Hudson from 1805 to 1825. There is a marker at the site of his family's home, at the intersection of Ravenna and South Main Streets.
There is also a historical marker at the location of the first meetinghouse of the First Congregational Church, at East Main and Church Streets, reading: "In August, 1835, church members unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that slavery is 'a direct violation of the law of Almighty God.' At a November 1837 prayer meeting, church member and anti-slavery leader John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery."
Thousands of fugitive slaves, heading for freedom in Canada, passed through Hudson; it was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Owen Brown was very active in assisting the fugitives. As of 2019, 21 locations in and around Hudson associated with the Underground Railroad have been identified. and in 1992 there appeared a book by James Caccamo, Hudson and the Underground Railroad.
Hudson's period of anti-slavery leadership ended in the early 1830s. Beriah Green, the lone professor of theology at the college, was influenced by William Lloyd Garrison's new newspaper, The Liberator, and his Thoughts on African Colonization. He preached four fiery anti-slavery sermons, which so inflamed the college that nothing else was being discussed, the president said, and the town was torn apart. Green, expecting to be fired, left to become president of the Oneida Institute, on condition Blacks be admitted on the same terms as whites. Oneida, near Utica, New York, replaced Hudson as the nation's leading abolitionist center.
Hudson is located in northeastern Summit County. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 25.87 square miles (67.00 km2), of which 25.60 square miles (66.30 km2) is land and 0.27 square miles (0.70 km2) is water.
Hudson's neighbors are, starting at the northern corporate boundary and proceeding clockwise:
Hudson's surface water flows into five major watersheds. The three most prominent are Brandywine Creek, Mud Brook, and Tinkers Creek. A small part of the western edge of town drains into the Cuyahoga River, and the southeastern corner of the city drains into Fish Creek.
Of the city's population over the age of 25, 68.0% held a bachelor's degree or higher. According to a 2007 estimate, the median income for a household in the city was $112,740, and the median income for a family was $128,727. Males had a median income of $87,169 versus $38,226 for females. The per capita income for the city was $40,915. About 1.3% of families and 1.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 2.2% of those under age 18 and 2.0% of those age 65 or over.
Note: Historical Population figures before 2000 are for the former Village of Hudson only and do not include the former Hudson Township.
As of the 2020 census, Hudson had a population of 23,110, a median age of 44.2 years, 25.7% of residents under the age of 18, and 18.3% of residents 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 96.1 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 94.8 males age 18 and over.
95.3% of residents lived in urban areas, while 4.7% lived in rural areas.
There were 8,049 households in Hudson, of which 38.4% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 74.1% were married-couple households, 8.4% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 15.1% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 15.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
There were 8,379 housing units, of which 3.9% were vacant. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0.8% and the rental vacancy rate was 5.7%.
As of the 2010 census there were 22,262 people, 7,620 households, and 6,301 families residing in the city. The population density was 869.6 inhabitants per square mile (335.8/km2). There were 8,002 housing units at an average density of 312.6 per square mile (120.7/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 92.7% White, 1.3% African American, 0.1% Native American, 4.3% Asian, 0.3% from other races, and 1.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.7% of the population.
There were 7,620 households, of which 43.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 74.9% were married couples living together, 5.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 1.9% had a male householder with no wife present, and 17.3% were non-families. 15.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.87 and the average family size was 3.21.
The median age in the city was 42.5 years. 30.1% of residents were under the age of 18; 5.5% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 18.5% were from 25 to 44; 34% were from 45 to 64; and 11.8% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.1% male and 50.9% female.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Hudson, Ohio”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.