Hudson

Transcribed from Caldwell County Heritage Book. Information from Lenoir News-Topic

The town of Hudson got its name from the Hudson brothers, Monroe and Johnny, who moved into the community from South Carolina. The town became known as Hudsonville, but about 1889, the "ville" was dropped and the town was called Hudson after.

Monroe Hudson became the first postmaster in the village, servng from 1889. He lived in a store building and ran a grocery store in connection with his postal duties.

Johnny was thought to be retarded; however he was a very pious person who was said to be in church every time the doors opened. Just weeks after his first wife died, he married a spinster. Johnny lived to be an old man.

According to "A Short History of Hudson, North Carolina" by Mabel C Conley, the source for this story, Hudson began as a small sawmill camp, thickly wooded with white pine, long leaf pine and hardwoods such as maples and poplars.

The town has grown from three buildings at its inception to a small business district lying on both sides of the Southern Railway, formerly the Carolina and Northwestern Railway, and a shopping center, Fairway. The population of Hudson in the 1980 census was 3,000.

The three buildings standing in 1880 were a frame two-story house and two log houses belonging to Logan Sullivan and to a Reece family, respectively.

The first church built in Hudson was the Gunpowder Baptist, organized in 1831 with 13 charter members. The name was changed to Sardis Baptist in 1835 and when a new church was built across the railroad tracks in 1955, members voted to change the name to First Baptist Church of Hudson.

Two other early churches organized were the St John's Lutheran across the street and the tracks from First Baptist, and Hudson Methodist, organized in 1889, down the street from First Baptist.

The first post office was operating at Buck Shoals in 1864 with Susanna Rice as the first postmaster.

There are two public schools within the city limits. They are: the Hudson Elementary School and Hudson Middle School, formerly Hudson High School, both located off Cedar Valley Road. The first school in the community was the Lingle School, built about 1880, which served as both a meeting house and a school building.

In 1905, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted a law authorizing the incorporation of Hudson as a town. Professor Phillips of the Mountain View Academy, a missionary boarding school, was chosen as the first mayor.

Hudson's first brick building was erected in 1913 when the original academy building was torn down. The new building had large columns in front, a dome on top, four downstairs classrooms and an upstairs auditorium. This building wa declared unsage in 1925 when one of the walls cracked.

The town of Hudson had back luck with the school buildings built to replace it. The one story building with a courtyard was destroyed by fire in the fall of 1940. In February, 1943, before a new building could be completed, it too was razed by fire. The present elementary school replaced the second burned building. A second building was built later to house junior high students.

Hudson High School was completed in 1956 and was used as a high school until South Caldwell High School was completed in 1977 as a consolidation of Hudson and Granite Falls.