Term of Award

Spring 1979

Degree Name

Master of Arts in History

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Department

Department of History

Committee Chair

Robert M. Barrow

Committee Member 1

Charlton Moseley

Committee Member 2

J. Perry Cochran

Abstract

In Puritan Village, Sumner Chilton Powell traced the migration of a community of English Puritans to a strikingly similar community in New England; in The Urban Frontier, Richard C. Wade described the role of towns in opening the frontier to stable settlement. Hudson, Ohio--falls neatly into both categories. Settled primarily by residents of Goshen, Connecticut, under the leadership of David Hudson, the town developed along the religious and cultural lines of an eighteenth-century New England community, despite its frontier nature. Far in advance of the line of settlement, Hudson grew rapidly as an important commercial center long before the surrounding areas became extensively populated. As the "cutting edge of the frontier" marched past Hudson, the town lost its dominant position to new, better-situated communities. For a time Hudson drew on its New England heritage to become the educational center of the Western Reserve, but that also suffered a decline. Relegated to a backwater existence, Hudson's residents have labored for more than one hundred years to preserve the New England cultural traditions from which they came.

Copyright

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