Hudson in the Great War

Gossips current obsession with Hudson during World War I led to the discovery of a book called Columbia County in the World War, published in 1924, which was compiled by the Home Defense Committee of Columbia County and is available online.

The photograph above, which is one of several that appear in the book, shows Company F on July 20, 1917, the day of its "official federal muster." Below is the dedication that appears in the book.     

The book is 958 pages long, and more than 800 of those pages are taken up with individual biographies of the young men and women from Columbia County who served in the war. A sampling of those biographies--the biographies of people familiar from Gossips posts--are offered here. First, is Malcolm Gifford, Jr., the first Hudsonian to die in World War I, while serving with a Canadian artillery unit.

  
Edward Best returned to Hudson for a visit in mid-January 1918, not long before Company F "went across."

William John Cruise was the son of Hudson Police chief John Cruise, who was at the center of a great scandal in Hudson in 1922.

In October 2014, Gossips accounted the extraordinary life of Hudson native son Coert DuBois.

Scrolling through the biographies, one is struck by the number people from Hudson and elsewhere in Columbia County serving in World War I who were foreign born. A vast majority were born in Italy, but there were also those born in Poland, Russia, Greece, Sweden, and Germany--examples of which follow. 

  

The book, which can be accessed here, is a rich resource for those who want to research their Columbia County ancestors who served in World War I. 

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