Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear in Hudson

On Thursday night, when Michael LeSawyer was recounting of his sixty years living at the corner of Fairview Avenue and Green Street, he told what had preceded Stewart's Shops on the site across the street. I thought he said, "William Tecumseh's Mobil station," but that seemed a bit bizarre, so after the meeting I contacted LeSawyer and asked if he had indeed said William Tecumseh, as in William Tecumseh Sherman, as in Sherman's March to the Sea.

LeSawyer's response: "Yes, indeed." William Tecumseh Sherman, known to his friends as Bill Sherman, owned a Mobil station at the corner of Green Street and Fairview Avenue back in the day. He claimed to be a direct descendant of the famous Union general who terrorized Georgia. According to LeSawyer, "He had a sassy southern accent, reminiscent of W. C. Fields, sorta." Every winter, he would close the Mobil station and drive down to Miami for the season in his red Cadillac convertible, with the vanity plate "WTS."

"Quite a colorful character," LeSawyer recalled. "Loud, boisterous, smoked cigars, and always wore thick, dark prescription sunglasses." 

A search of Ancestry.com revealed that, in 1990, Hudson's own William Tecumseh Sherman lived at 25 Virginia Avenue in Greenport, a.k.a. Lorenz Park. He died in 1992, at the age of 83, and is buried in the Ghent Union Cemetery.
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