The Great War: May 28,1918

This series of posts exploring life in Hudson during the First World War has twice told of Hudsonians suspected of being "pro-German." In April, we shared the story of C. H. Frese, a naturalized American citizen of German descent who owned a delicatessen at 421 Warren Street. Around the time the United States entered the war, rumors circulated about Frese and his family intimating that they were unpatriotic and disloyal to the country. In December, we told the story of George Stubits, an immigrant from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who was jailed for failing to return a questionnaire to the local draft board. Today, we share another story about someone in Hudson being suspected of pro-German sentiments.

On May 28, 1918, the Columbia Republican reported the fate of Lewis Federigo Felix von Kobbe, who had been arrested in Hudson three months earlier. Gossips could find no report of von Kobbe's arrest in the newspapers when happened in February 1918, and a search on Ancestry.com turned up no information about him.

The news of von Kobbe's internment was reported in newspapers throughout the region. It was from a report in a Newburgh paper that we learned he had been arrested, for failing to report a change of address, by Chief John Cruise, who a few years later, in 1922, would be charged with and convicted of dereliction of duty for allowing "the sale of intoxicants and prostitution" to exist in Hudson.
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