Ohio-born Thomas Hudson (1842-1915) ran a saloon in St. Joseph, MO in the 1870s. After three family deaths within two years – 9-year-old son Charles, first wife Mary, infant daughter Emma – Hudson married Lavenia Sayle (1855-1930) in 1882. Five years later, the Hudson clan, including daughter Blanche and son Thomas E., trekked out to Los Angeles, where youngest daughter Elizabeth was born. In 1899, they bought 7 acres in Hollywood and built a home on the corner of present-day Hollywood Blvd. and Hudson Ave. In fact this street took the Hudson name in 1903 when the family subdivided their property. (An 1887 tract map shows it as a planned road called “Dae Avenue”, after Hollywood founder Daeida Wilcox, but it’s unclear whether it ever went by that name.) Thomas E. Hudson – that is, the son – remained on Hudson Ave. until his death in 1955. Ironically, the two block stretch of Hudson that the Hudsons actually owned and lived on is no longer called Hudson: it’s now Schrader Blvd.
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