USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Torrington > History of Torrington, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1737, with biographies and genealogies > Part 50
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He early displayed great talent for music. When four years old he would unite with a musical coterie, and carry a part independently in perfect harmony. In 1841, his father being sent on a mission to the states of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, took him, his mother and elder brother, with him with the purpose of giving him and his elder brother the advantages of education in Oberlin; but not liking the law and no grace influence that ruled in that institution, he re- turned them to schools in Northampton, Mass. With his love for books, he manifested a desire to learn the ART, and make it his business, to make books. With a view to this, he entered the house of Drake & Parsons in Hartford ; but before finishing his education there, he was seized, suddenly, bv an illness which was very dis- tressing and protracted, and issued in the termination of his youthful days, in January, 1855, when twenty-one years of age. He was baptized when very young into the spirit and cause of anti-slavery, temperance and Christian humanity ; in which his integrity was never compromised. With his decease the house of Hudson lost the given name of Daniel which had had a regular descent from Daniel of Lancaster, England, of about 1590.
ERASMUS D. HUDSON, M.D.,
Son of Daniel Coe and Rhoda (Fowler) Hudson, was born in Tor- ringford Dec. 5, 1806, in the old house built by John Burr as his hostelry and inherited from his paternal and maternal ancestry a strong
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E. D. Hudson M.D.
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constitution and length of days ; in sixty-nine years having never suffered personal sickness one day except ocean sickness while cross- ing the Atlantic, and disability a short season when a boy, from a fractured leg. His temperament was ardent, nervo sanguineous ; his mind, action and disposition peaceful and conscientious ; but took great pleasure in the discussion of popular, moral and scientific sub- jects. While quite young, during an excited discussion held, respect- ing the intrusion of the Methodists into the pastoral field of Father Mills, he had the temerity to ingeniously make the query : "why the Methodists had not the same right as any body to hold meetings there? " which obtained for him the appellation of little Methodist. His physical activity was commensurate with his mental ; for he was always alive to every work of art and of agriculture to which he could lend a helping hand and was frequently entrusted with responsi- blities too weighty for his years, but which were efficiently fulfilled. He took pleasure and pride in executing such trusts ; and this dis- position has attended him to such a degree that like Uncle John, a character in the Caxtons, he has had the credit of "carrying every body in his breeches pocket," and therefore it was very natural for him to become quickly enlisted in every philanthropic enterprise and humane reform.
His father was a respectable, industrious man and citizen of kind impulses ; a hardworking farmer, and manufacturer of brick, and had very little taste or time for literature, beyond the ordinary reading of the day. His mother's intellectual and pyschological inheritance was of a superior order, to which her children are ever indebted, and wherein they have every reason to feel honored. Her spirit, wisdom and counsels were great, and everywhere influential, and to her blessed influence the doctor attributed the indebtedness of the world for any and all the good he may have been instrumental in doing, during his whole life. His father's resources being limited, rendering the exer- cise of rigid economy important, made it necessary for him to avail himself of all the physical powers which every member of his family could contribute to his farming, dairy, and manufacturing interests ; hence while his sons and daughters were early sent to the public school, which was of a more than ordinary character in Torringford, when they became of sufficient age to render some service, they were retained at home during the summer season of the year. In the autumn and winter seasons the doctor was allowed to devote his time exclusively to mental culture, which he seems to have done with great
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regularity and assiduity. After the Rev. Epaphras Goodman was settled in Torringford as colleague to Father Mills, he opened a private school for a limited number of pupils, and the doctor became one of them ; and in this school which had become an academy he finished his academical studies. He was also a regular pupil of the Sabbath school and Bible class, by which, with home instruction, he became well versed in the Assembly and Westminster catechisms and Bible literature and at the age of ten years, during a revival of religion, he with many others was baptized by the Rev. Father Mills.
To Rev. Mr. Goodman, and Mrs. Jeremiah Mills, a literary, en- terprising and eminent woman, the doctor was greatly indebted for their inspiring encouragement, particularly to Mr. Goodman, for his instructions in mental and moral discipline, decision of character, and noble daring for the right ; for being naturally timid, and of peaceful disposition, while his moral sense was strong, he needed that stimula- tion to develop the powers within him. His large conscience would have made him a bigot, an unmerciful inquisitor, had he not been largely endowed with an over balancing degree of benevolence, so that Christian humanity has ever guided him with eager earnestness in the paths of justice, love and truth.
At the age of sixteen years in 1823 his father was induced, at con- siderable sacrifice, to relinquish all claims to his time and services, and allow him to go forth, with his good wishes, dependent wholly upon his own intellectual, moral and physical resources, to sail with God's help the surging seas of life, and armed with the credentials furnished by Goodman, endorsed by Father Mills and others, con- cerning his scholarship, moral integrity, and character, he departed from home, and friends, and went to Massachusetts and taught a school. He was then invited by his mother's brother, Dr. Remus M. Fowler, to enter his office and commence the study of medicine, at New Marlboro, Mass., which invitation he accepted. Soon after he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Prof. John P. Batchelder, M.D., dean of the Berkshire Medical college, and professor of surgery and physiology ; who offered him any amount of credit if he would matriculate for the entire course of four years of study and graduate at that college. He accepted this proffered kindness with alacrity and entered that institution at Pittsfield, Mass.
A distinguishing excellence of the instruction he received from Mr. Goodman, was the requirement to make a written report every Monday morning, of his sermons preached the previous Sunday,
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which he fulfilled by abbreviated notes, and that practice proved in- valuable by enabling him to take more copious notes of medical lectures, than any other student in college. Stenography was not practiced at that time as now. During vacations, he continued his studies, and taught school. During the last year he attended the sick at their bedside, and thus improved the valuable clinical advantages afforded him in the practice of Prof. Batchelder and Dr. Fowler. In 1827, after four years of unremitted toil, he finished his regular course of studies ; received the honorary degree of medical doctor, at the Berkshire Medical college ; endorsed by Edward Dorr Griffin, LL.D., president, of Williams college, of which latter institution the former was a department. He was also elected a member of the Berkshire Natural History Society, in which science he took a lively and honorable interest.
He then breathed a new life; and while enjoying the freshness of that life, married, by a joyous good fortune, Martha Turner, daughter of Isaac Turner, Esq., of New Marlboro, Mass., of polished manners, and noble sense ; one of the excellent of the earth. By special invi- tation he visited, and settled at Wintonbury, now Bloomfield, Connec- ticut in the practice of medicine. There his professional talent and skill were immediately called into active and unremitting exercise, in the treatment of the low types, and virulent forms of disease, typhus and typhoid fevers, which had decimated the people of that malarial and miasmatic region, in which his success was very honorable. He soon grew into rank and position with physicians of the first class, with whom he became associated in councils and medical associations. He was made a member by unanimous vote, of the Hopkins Medical Association, of Hartford county ; the most exclusive, and scientific body of physicians of that county, and of the state ; composed of the studious and leading men, as Todd, Coggswell, Sumner, Brigham, Woodward and others, in which he took an active part in essays, and the discussions of medical subjects. He was a member of Hartford County Medical Society, and elected fellow of the Connecticut Medical Society, and was appointed physician and surgeon to the Connecticut State Emigrant Hospital, located in Wintonbury.
Scarcely had he become settled in Wintonbury, as a physician, be- fore he was approached, and importuned to prepare an essay on the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage, and open the agitation of the subject of temperance in that valley of fruitful orchards, grainfields, distilleries and habitual drinking in every class of society. Here his
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moral courage was early tested and he had the temerity to accede to the request, which he deemed to be his essential duty to society, in every manner of consideration. He thus became the pioneer agitator in 1828, in the great temperance conflict and reform which followed, but found the movement to be at his own peril in the matters of pro- fessional patronage, and pecuniary consideration. He very soon found himself surrounded by opposing influences, threatening to com- pel him in his dependent circumstances, to take a ticket of leave. Here suddenly his eyes were opened to the slavery of the mind and speech, and his puritan blood, so recently all quietly coursing, quick- ened in every vein. He had ingenuously put his hand to the plough, for a philanthropic and noble work, and was not of a mould to look back, to regret this act, although forsaken and denounced by those who had early welcomed him, as a beloved physician, let the plough share of temperance drive deep and thorough. Soon prominent in- fluences began to gather round him. The Hon. Francis Gillett, who had just emerged from his collegiate course, affiliated with the doctor. A temperance society was organized, and some time after a Connecticut State Temperance Society. Dr. Hudson and Mr. Gillett were to visit adjoining towns to address meetings. Although leading religious and political influences were hostile or apathetic to the cause yet it prospered greatly, and triumphed for a considerable season ; the fires of distilleries remained extinguished, and many stores and taverns became temperance houses.
Dr. Hudson took an active part in revivals of religion ; attended conferences of churches ; and his home became the rendezvous for every one engaged in the interest of general reform, education and Christian philanthropy. He was frequently importuned to change his residence, and locate and practice his profession in more promising and lucrative fields, but steadily declined until the battle he had en- listed in was won. Afterwards when an urgent and important re- quest came from his old minister and preceptor, and home friends, to . return to his native town and old home, it was too pathetic for him to resist, although the field for professional business was limited. Doctor Samuel Woodward, the old physician of his father's family, and attendant on him in his misfortune of a broken leg, when a boy, was retiring from practice, and made an opening in Torringford, which seemed opportune for him ; and in turn he became consulting physician to the aged doctor, and attended him in his declining years and ultimate sickness.
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Soon after he had settled in Torringford, in consideration of the remarkable salubrity, hygienic state, and retiracy of the region, and the intelligence and moral character of the inhabitants of the com- munity, he with Mr. Goodman established a family boarding school for boys, whose parents were residents of the large cities. They re- ceived some twenty such into their respective families ; and having secured as teacher a college graduate, Mr. Goodman took charge of the moral training, and the doctor of the physical, and thereby all forces were united for the success of the enterprise. In the moral reform of the day, Mr. Goodman was far in advance of his brethren the clergy generally, but in which he and the doctor were yoke fellows, and did a great and noble service for mankind, to which the re- cords of the Torringford temperance efforts bear abundant testimony. As the doctor had ventured on this subject in Windsor, so had Mr. Goodman in Torringford, but in the latter place the people generally had followed with unanimity, cordiality, and relinquishment of long entertained habits, the equal of which is probably not to be found in any other town in the state.
In addition to professional and literary enterprises when opportunity afforded, the doctor made scientific excursions with his pupils in the study of mineralogy, for which Torrington and Litchfield furnished an unusually large field, and he contributed to the state survey by Prof. Shepard and Dr. Percival important collections and numerous interesting specimens1.
In that era of our country's history, in addition to the temperance reform and revivals of religion, the subject of American slavery began to be considerably agitated, and it is well to be borne in mind that that agitation had its foundation, always in an awakened moral sense and the quickening influence of divine truth. Wherever the Chris- tian life and sense could be aroused to the claims of the enslaved, these anti-slavery principles grew as if nourished in rich soil. As these brethren began to manifest themselves against slavery from the pulpit, in public and private discussions, they found some of their friends and patrons withdrawing their friendship and support, and especially so when Dr. Hudson began to take an active part in the discussions. In 1836 the alienation of opposers to temperance and anti-slavery became so demonstrable as to cause the dismissal of Mr. Goodman from his pastoral charge, and the financial crisis in 1837
" See their report to the Legislature, and the State Cabinet.
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so far affected their school enterprise as to induce them to abandon it, and Mr. Goodman removed to Dracut, Massachusetts.
The agitation concerning slavery had spread to many towns in the county of Litchfield, and found favor with the more actively philan- thropic men and women, who assembled at Wolcottville in a barn, for the lack of any other obtainable place, in the face of a furious mob, and organized a county society. Soon afterwards a state anti-slavery society was organized at Hartford in the City Hall, which was dis- persed by a mob and driven to hold their other sessions in the tem- perance hotel of S. B. Treat, on State street. A paper, to be called the Charter Oak, was decreed and published, and Doctor Hudson was invited to become the general agent of the society and regular contributor to its monthly issue; which invitation he accepted. Hence he laid his profession upon the altar of humanity and justice, and in 1838 entered the lecturing field with the expectation that all of christendom would rally to such a philanthropic cause with one accord, and the work would spedily triumph. He expected that the clergy and the army of recent converts which had appeared in the revivals of religion would rally to such a cause with alacrity ; that all who truly loved the philanthropic teachings of the Son of man could by no means be persuaded to stand aloof from it. He was accompanied in his first tours by the Rev. Nathaniel Colver, a Baptist clergyman, agent of the American anti-slavery society of New York, who, in his very pleasant way, frequently introduced the doctor to his Baptist brethren as "an upland Baptist." They were directed to commence their work in Fairfield county, the very Georgia of Connecticut, full of drunkenness, and of those who had obtained their great gains from slavery. They visited the various towns of the county from their northern entrance to the sea, and encountered the fierce and blood- thirsty opposition and mobs at every step, which sheared their horses, pelted meeting houses, halls and private dwellings, where they were holding meetings and stopping, with stones, clubs, and the like. The mob blew up one meeting house and one private dwelling with gun powder, where they were holding meetings". The opposition was so fearfully great that Mr. Colver retired from the field and settled as pastor in Boston, leaving the doctor single-handed. He was there- after commissioned by the society to make the entire state his field of labor.
The doctor adopted a thorough system of evangelization in the
1In the town of Wolcott, in 1839, they burned the church to the ground.
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work, for on entering a place, his first visit was to the clergy ; and with the Bible as his text-book, his appeals were made to the Christian sense of clergymen and the membership of the churches with a rea- sonable expectation that they would be noticed with respect, and re- ceive their support. They not only turned a deaf ear but treated him with the most cold-hearted contempt, with intimations of mob violence ; men of the baser sort being used as tools by those who were interested by every other relation financial and political, religious, social and domestic to the peculiar institution. Wherever he went, in the face of the most dangerous, disheartening and sickening op- poosition he sought to drive an entering wedge, knowing and pro- claiming that the day would come when the people must consider the subject or lose their freedom. He enlisted every philanthropist pos- sible to circulate papers and tracts on the subject, and sought to pre- pare the way for future effort and access to those who might be wil- ling to hear and investigate. His communications to the Charter Oak were no unmeaning rebukes or ill timed exposures of the corrupted clergy and churches by the unholy institutions. His entire efforts were purely Christian, sustained by a practical use and application of the great Christian principles, law of love, of justice, judgment, truth and equity.
Under such efforts the cause prospered in his hands ; societies were multiplied ; anti-slavery literature circulated ; funds were contri- buted ; additional laborers were temporarily supplied ; here and there a clergyman dared to lift his voice," against the sin of slavery, though generally at his peril. In spite of the current of opposition, obloquy and outrage, the cause was making such progress as to create an alarm, on the part of slave holders, their aiders, abetters and apolo- gists. Abolitionists were too invincible ; too strongly fortified with the panoply of truth and righteousness to be put down ; and what was more, they were commanding a large portion of the active living Christian philanthropy and energies of the churches. Then the spirit of slavery in the church and ecclesiastical bodies, commenced anew its tactics, to divide the abolitionists and conquer them, by raising the issue of slavery as an evil, not sin per se ; that they could not " join with Garrison infideis, woman lecturers, petticoat govern- ment, Amazons and Jezebels ;" and by such methods did affect the community largely ; and for a time, divided the strength of the an- ti-slavery people. That cry proved to be what it had been predicted a false and pro-slavery issue. Doctor Hudson pushed on the work ; though entreated, and admonished, threatened and finally proscribed
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by the executive committee of the Connecticut society, which had ever highly commended him ; but were deceived by the clerical appeal ! The doctor was dismissed ; but immediately appointed lecturing agent of the American Anti-slavery Society with headquarters at New York and correspondent of the National Anti-slavery Standard, the organ of the society.
After continuing his labors in Connecticut another year, he was sent with Charles C. Burleigh to labor one year in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. His wife and two sons accompanied him, and were located at Oberlin, for advantages, which he had supposed were there to be obtained ; and when his mission expired they returned to North- ampton, Mass. He was next sent to the states of Maine and New Hampshire ; attending conventions, forming anti-slavery organiza- tions ; in 1843, was joined to a corps of lecturing agents, to hold meetings, and attend a series of conventions, of two and three days' session, in the state of Massachusetts, and some portions of Con- necticut and Rhode Island.
In 1844, a series of one hundred consecutive conventions were appointed to be held in the state of New York, and two sets of lecturing agents were assigned to hold meetings in the various towns, cities, and villages, in the county in which the convention was to be held to secure the attendance of the people, and sustain the conven- tions, which were of two and three days' sessions, and Dr. Hudson was designated to this work. In 1845, Abby K. Foster, Elizabeth Hitchcock, and the doctor were assigned to do duty, lecturing, hold- ing meetings, and attending a series of county conventions in the state of Pennsylvania and Delaware, which they assiduously performed. In 1846, the doctor was assigned to labor in the border counties of southern New York, where little work had been attempted. Lewis Hayden, now holding an honorable position in the General Court of Massachusetts, a fugitive slave from Kentucky, accompanied him to be initated into the work. In 1847, his labors were mainly in the northern part of central New York, in conventions and local meet- ings. In 1848, they were in Connecticut and western Massachusetts, continuing until in 1849 and 1850, when his nervous system became so wrought upon, prostrated and partially exhausted, a serious mis- fortune befalling his son, that he decided to retire from the lecturing field, continuing to sustain a lively working interest in the great cause until after the proclamation of emancipation was issued, and American slavery was abolished. He was one of the executive com-
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mittee of the American society who decreed the continuance of the society and its organ, the Anti-slavery Standard.
In 1850, Doctor Hudson, in considering the proposition of re- newing his profession concluded to adopt as a specialty, Reparative Surgery, for general and special physical disabilities and deformi- ties, caused by injuries or disease, and commenced his operations at Springfield, Mass., where he remained until 1855; when by the solicitations of Drs. Parker, Mott, Van Buren and other leading surgeons of New York, he removed to that city and instituted an office business. The object of this practice is to radically restore functional impairments, caused by disease, and joints and long bones, dislocated diseases, fractured and ununited, also to compensate for mutilations by amputation, or resections, with representative prothetic apparatus, and appliances which he devised, had constructed and adapted under his special and personal attention, by ingenious artisans in his employ ; and to fulfill every special object for the compensa- tion of lost parts, and reparation of injured, diseased and deformed parts. He espoused and treated philosophically the first cases of ankle and knee joint amputations which were performed in this country, so as to render those mutilations of the least possible loss and disability to the subjects ; and wrote monographs in support of that improvement of surgery. He also invented apparatus for cases of resections of the arm, elbow and shoulder joints, and wrote and published a monograph to " save the arm," by resection, which was in- strumental of saving scores of arms injured by gun shot, in the war of the rebellion. He was commissioned, by the surgeon general of the United States army, to have charge of the mutilated, disabled and deformed cases assigned to the military hospital at Central Park, New York ; and of other hospitals, where the wounded soldiers and sailors of the army were sent. The soldiers who had survived hip joint amputation, and resections, were exclusively assigned to the care and treatment of Doctor Hudson, by special orders of the sur- geon general of the U. S. army. Doctor Hudson made extensive reports of surgical cases of amputations, resections and distortions to the surgeon general ; and also contributed casts, profiles, and photo- graphs of surgical cases for the army medical museum at Washington, D. C. He also contributed to the surgical literature of the war de- partment, monographs on sundry topics ; on amputations, resections, Symes amputation at ankle-joint, and other subjects under various surgical subjects, which have been commended and placed in the army library at Washington, and complimentally acknowledged by
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