The Crime Commission comes to town

Published in the Register-Star Feb. 5, 2011

Mention Hudson’s Diamond Street to people of a certain age in the area and you may be likely to hear a story about a neighborhood known for its flaunting of the law, a place where gambling and prostitution thrived.

The funniest story this reporter heard related to Diamond Street, by then renamed Columbia, involved a man I met in Kinderhook. It was the late 1940s and he and his new bride, on their way south to honeymoon, stopped in Hudson for the night. Not knowing their way around, the newlyweds ended up on Columbia Street looking for a hotel. The man left his bride in the car and went to find out the price of a room at what appeared to be a small hotel. He soon realized his mistake when he was greeted by the denizens of the establishment. Needless to say the couple didn’t stay.

Our friend in Kinderhook may not have been aware of Hudson’s reputation, but he was apparently in the minority.

From Decoration Day to Memorial Day

Published in the Register-Star May 29, 2010

The procession moved up Warren Street in Hudson toward the cemetery with solemnity, while the band played a mournful march.

Once there the residents swept away the leaves and debris from the graves and laid the crosses, which were entwined with flowers, against the headstones.

Here and there children, some too young to have witnessed the conflagration that had torn America apart, ran about with garlands of flowers that they strung amongst the graves.

It was May 30, 1873 and Hudson was observing its first official Decoration Day. Earlier that month New York Gov. John Dix had declared the day a state holiday, adjured New Yorkers to decorate the graves of dead Union soldiers and to solemnize the occasion “with fitting observances” in “remembrance of the gallant dead who gave their lives for the preservation of the Union.”

Columbia County's role in the Revolution

Published in the Register-Star July 5, 2009

In honor of the July Fourth weekend the Register-Star is presenting a brief account of the many ways in which the area did its part for the cause of independence, from the men who fought and the women who kept the home fires burning to the houses that saw history unfold within their walls.

Across the rolling lawn and tucked away between trees twisted with age 43 graves mark where men who helped sever the ties between America and England now lie. Numbered among the 43 was a Brigadier General, Samuel Edmonds; a Naval Commander, Alexander Coffin; and a Captain, John Kemper, who served at Valley Forge, the winter quarters of the Continental Army from December 1777 to June 1778.

An Old Battle Rages in Columbia County

Published in the Register-Star Aug. 17, 2009

The thick clouds of smoke rose skyward and shouts of “Vive La France” and “Down with the Corsican” could be heard between the loud bursts of gunfire. Old Austerlitz Village on Route 22 was the site of a reenactment of one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s greatest victories, which occurred Dec. 2, 1805 in what is now the Czech Republic.

The man who shaped European politics for a generation and ruled France as Emperor from 1804 to 1815 bested a coalition of Russian and Austrian troops at the battle. Born on the island of Corsica in 1769, he rose to prominence as a military leader, but would die in exile on another island, St. Helena, in 1821.