Another Collateral Discovery

While trying to learn more about the Columbia Springs Hotel, I found something else of interest. It seems that in June of 1870, when Hudson was not planning a suitable Independence Day celebration, the city was host to a convention of the Hudson River Editorial Association, attended by newspaper editors from cities and villages up and down the river. When the convention was over, J. G. P. Holden, the editor for the Yonkers Gazette, recorded his impressions of his journalistic colleagues, many of whom represented Hudson newspapers. I found these "pen pictures" published in the Ithaca Daily Journal for June 27, 1870.

Pen Pictures.
The Hudson River Editorial Association had a convention week before last, at which Mr. J. G. P. Holden, of the Yonkers Gazette made one. On his return home, the Editor of the Gazette made these pen pictures of the gentlemen in attendance:
—Byrne, of The Columbia Republican, is a quiet, venerable and dignified gentleman who will never set the river on fire.
—Sheldon, of The Sing Sing Republican, enjoys a good story, and is a genial companion for a car or carriage ride.
—Franklin, of  The Coxsackie News, is a young printer-editor who is destined to make his mark in the profession, and prefers lemonade to "gin and milk."
—Howard, of The Hudson Star, is a proper young man, and always goes home to his family at 8 p.m. As a "local" he has few equals and no superiors.
—Pease, the poet-farmer-editor of The Troy Weekly Press, could tell the best "Sunday School stories" of any knight of the quill in Hudson last Thursday.
—Howard, of The Hudson Star, and Davids, of The Poughkeepsie Eagle, are "some" on ten pins, but they can't suck lemonade through a straw equal to Pease, of The Troy Press.  
—Hodge, of The Hudson Gazette, is a natural blonde, a wit, and a whole-souled, capital good fellow generally. His affection for Yankee Robinson's blondes has about died out.
—Hall, of The Catskill Recorder, is a man after our own heart. He "speaks right out in meeting," whether that meeting be in the house or on the sidewalk, and what he says is to the point.
—Williams, of The Hudson Register, is a pleasant and attentive entertainer and an admirer of the "pretty waiter girl" who furnishes fans at the Columbia Springs Hotel. He takes his soda straight.
—Davids, of The Poughkeepsie Eagle, is a great walkist. Last Thursday morning he walked from Poughkeepsie to Hudson, a distance of 40 miles, in four and a half hours. Allowing for stops, this is at the rate of over ten miles an hour. We wouldn't make a "solemn 'davy" to the truth of this, but fall back on The Daily Press, which gives us this information for its corroboration.

Gossips Notes: "Yankee Robinson's blondes" very likely makes reference to the Yankee Robinson Circus, a traveling show from the Midwest that toured the country in the 1860s and 1870s. An account of the show in 1866 mentions "twins by the name of Evans," who were recruited in Decatur, Illinois, and billed for the season as the "Wild Australian Albinos." Could they have been the "blondes" for whom Hodge had affection? Had the Yankee Robinson Circus paid a visit to Hudson?

Williams, of the Hudson Register, who is said to admire a "pretty waiter girl" at the Columbia Springs Hotel, is the editor who wrote the piece Gossips published yesterday, decrying the fact there would be no Independence Day celebration in Hudson in 1870.