Hudson

there until his death, becoming one of its fore-
most citizens, and doing diligent service in the
preservation of the records and in all the cele-
brations of that historic town. He presided over
and delivered the address at the centennial ob-
servances of the battle of Lexington. For twen-
ty-one years he was a member of the Massa-
chusetts Historical Society, and he was a frequent
contributor of memoirs and other documents to
its annual reports. He was a voluminous writer
of sermons, speeches, historical papers and ad-
dresses, and his published works include A Series
of Letters Addressed to Rev. Hosea Ballot
of Boston: Being a Vindication of the Doctrine
of Future Retribution Against the Principal
Arguments Used by Him, Mr. Balfour and
Others (1827); A Reply to Mr. BalfOUT'S Es-
says (1829); A History of the Town of West-
minster (1832); Doubts Concerning the Battle
of Bunker Hill (1857) J Celebration of the One
Hundredth Anniversary of the Incorporation of
Westminster, Mass., Containing an Address by
Hon. Charles Hudson (1859); History of the
Town of Marlborough (1862); and History of
the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Mas-
sachusetts (1868). Robert C Winthrop in the
course of a memorial tribute to him before the
members of the Massachusetts Historical So-
ciety said that he was "one of the ablest and
honestest men whom Massachusetts ever had in
her service, a man of the strongest practical com-
mon sense, of untiring industry, of great ability,
and of the sternest integrity in public as well as
in private life" (Proceedings, post, p. 418). He
was twice married: first, July 21, 1825, to Ann
Rider of Shrewsbury, Mass., who died Sept 19,
1829; and second, to her sister Martha, May 14,
1830.

[Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. XVIII (1881); Memo-
rial Biogs. of the New England Historic Geneal. Soc>,
vol. VIII (1907) j New-England Hist, and Geneal. Reg.,
Oct. 1881; Boston Transcript, May 6, 1881; Charles
Hudson, Hist, of the Town of Lexington, Revised and
Continued to 1912 (2 vols., 1913),] E.F.E.

HUDSON, EDWARD (October i77*-Jan.
3, 1833), Irish patriot and pioneer American
dentist, was born in County Wexford, Ireland,
of English-Quaker parentage, the son of Capt
Henry Edward and Jane (de Tracey) Hudson.
Apparently his parents died during his child-
hood, for a contemporary record states that the
boy was adopted by a cousin, Dr. Hudson, a
dentist in Dublin "who educated him at Trinity
College and later instructed him in dentistry."
At Trinity, among Hudson's classmates were
Thomas Moore, the poet, who became an inti-
mate friend and associate, Robert Emmet, pa-
triot, and a number of young men destined to

Hudson

fame in Irish history. This group of youthful
agitators became prominent through their ac-
tivities in debating societies, and later several of
them, including Hudson, were drawn into the so-
called "Emmet conspiracy"—with the resulting
arrest of Hudson and thirteen of his associates
in March 1798, and their imprisonment in Kil-
mainham jail. After twelve months' captivity,
during which time several of his friends were
put to death, Hudson was taken to Ft. George,
Scotland, where he was confined until 1802.
During this period he was allowed to practise his
profession, in which he acquired a considerable
reputation among "the nobility and gentry of the
surrounding country," On the conclusion of the
Peace Treaty of Amiens, Han 25, 1802, he was
exiled to Holland, where he took the first oppor-
tunity to embark for America. He arrived at
Philadelphia in 1803; in April 1804 he married
Maria Bridget Bryne and engaged with his fa-
ther-in-law in the business of stationer and book-
seller. This venture, and another in the brewing
business, were failures. About 1810 he became
reestablished in the practice of dentistry, in which
he continued in Philadelphia until his death,
which followed a brief illness in 1833. He was
married three times; his second wife was Maria
Elizabeth Bicker, and his third was Marie Mac-
kie, the daughter of a prominent merchant in
Philadelphia. She became the mother of eight
children.

At a time when American dentistry was in its
infancy, Hudson's native talent and skill gave
him acknowledged leadership as a practitioner.
He made no outstanding discovery, nor left im-
portant writings. He was one of the first (1809)
to perform the operation of removing the dental
pulp and filling the root of the tooth to its end
with gold foil. He was broadly educated, tal-
ented in musical and artistic attainments, and
possessed of a magnetic personality which
brought him great popularity. The solid part of
his reputation was laid during his thirty years of
professional service, and his influence on dental
art in its primitive stage was great, but the im-
agination is stirred by a tribute of Thomas Moore,
in the preface to the fourth volume of his poetical
works, to "a young friend of our family, Ed-
ward Hudson . . . [who] was the first who
made known to me this rich mine of our coun-
try's melodies;—a mine, from the working of
which my humble labours as a poet have since
derived their sole lustre and value."

[B. L. Thorpe, in C &. E. Koch, Hwf. of Denial
Surgery, vol. Ill (1910); Chas. McMsums, Edward

Hudson, A Biog. Sketch (1002); W. H. Tirtwmait, "Dr.
Edward Hudson, Dentist/* Dented Brief, Sept* 1903;
Dental Cosmos, Sept, 1861; Am. Jwr, of Dental $ci,t

337