More About the Orphan Asylum

Yesterday, after reading the excerpt from the original Gossips of Rivertown, which talked about the founding of the Hudson Orphan Asylum and the preparations for a fair to raise money for its support, a reader sent me a page from the Hudson Daily Evening Register for January 26, 1882, containing these two items. 

By 1882, the Hudson Orphan Asylum had been in existence for almost forty years.

Mrs. James Gifford was married to Sanford Robinson Gifford's youngest sibling and lived on the northeast corner of Sixth and Columbia streets, in a house that survives today. The new asylum mentioned in the ad was 400 State Street, purchased in 1881 with funds left to the asylum by Sanford Gifford at his death in 1880. The legacy to the Hudson Orphan Asylum was the artist's only charitable bequest. Prior to 1881, the orphan asylum was located in this building at the corner of State and Seventh streets.