Hudson was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1819. He was the son of Barzillai Hudson by his second wife, Rebecca (Eaton) Hudson. He was a descendant of Daniel Hudson, who settled in Watertown, Massachussets, about 1640. Barzillai was for some years a sea captain and subsequently a dealer in coal and grain.
Education
Frederic's early education was received in the Mayhew School, Boston; later he attended the public schools of Concord, Massachussets, where he lived with a cousin, Stedman Buttrick.
Career
Upon the death of his mother in 1836, he went to New York to take a responsible position in Hudson's News Rooms, corner of Wall and Water Streets, a news-gathering agency which had been established by an older brother, Edward. Frederic's business was to get the foreign news, which then arrived in New York chiefly in English newspapers brought by sailing vessels. He therefore worked with the news-boat men, pilots, and captains of New York harbor. In this highly competitive business, he soon became acquainted with the leading journalistic figures in the city – among them James Gordon Bennett, who had recently started his Herald. The next year, 1837, Bennett asked Hudson, then eighteen years old, to join the Herald staff, which was thus enlarged to three members, including the proprietor.
Hudson was given much responsibility on the Herald from the first. The paper's business, size, and personnel increased rapidly. During the owner's trips to Europe, Hudson was left in charge; and when the title "managing editor" came into use in New York journalism, that became his designation. His brother Edward served for many years on the same paper as financial writer. Frederic played an important part in the development of modern news-gathering techniques in the middle of the nineteenth century, utilizing horse expresses, railroad trains, and the rapidly spreading telegraph as they became available. Bennett was in Europe during the Mexican War; but under Hudson's direction the Herald distinguished itself by setting up lines of communication with New Orleans for the transmission of war news partly by horse express, partly by railroad, and partly by telegraph.
When the New York Associated Press, forerunner of the modern Associated Press, was set up in 1848, Bennett made Hudson the Herald representative in that organization, and he and Henry J. Raymond composed the first executive committee of the new agency. Hudson was a leader in Associated Press management for fifteen years. Perhaps his greatest achievement, however, was the organization of the Herald's coverage of the Civil War, in the course of which that paper spent at least half a million dollars and put more special correspondents into the field than did any other paper. Hudson's broad view, indefatigable industry, and talent for detail made him a great organizer of news coverage. Samuel Bowles wrote at the time of Hudson's death: "Indeed we believe Mr. Hudson did more than any other man ever did to organize and stimulate the collection of news" (Springfield Republican, post); and the Herald (post) called him "the father of modern American journalism, so far as enterprise, sagacity, and boldness in gathering news are concerned. "
When the younger Bennett assumed the reins of Herald management in 1866, Hudson seized the opportunity to resign and take his invalid wife to Concord, where he bought a home in the village and thirty acres of farm land nearby. Here he wrote his Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872, the first comprehensive account of the subject. More journalistic than scholarly, it is nevertheless a book of great value. It was published in 1873, and its author died two years later in a railroad accident in Concord. He was unusually accessible, kindly, and inspiring to younger journalists.
Achievements
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Hudson is described by Henry Villard (Memoirs, 1904, I, 163) as "a fine-looking man, and one of the most courteous and obliging I ever met. "
Connections
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, that "your pet Eliza Woodward is very well & happily betrothed to a Mr. Hudson, quite a superior young man" (R. L. Rusk, ed. , The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1939, vol. III, pp. 65-66). Miss Woodward was a Concord schoolmistress; the marriage occurred in 1844. They had one son, Woodward, who became a prominent railroad attorney.