History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Silas A. Hudson
SILAS A. HUDSON was born in Mason County, Kentucky, December 13, 1815, and came to Iowa in 1839, locating at Burlington. He was a clerk in one of the early Territorial Legislatures and was chief clerk of the House of the First General Assembly of the State in 1846. He drafted the charter of the city of Burlington and the ordinances under which it was governed for twenty years. Mr. Hudson was an intimate friend of George D. Prentice, Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln and General U. S. Grant and was instrumental in making the arrangements under which Lincoln went to New York and made his great Cooper Institute speech which led to his nomination for President. He was a cousin of General Grant, whom he knew from boyhood. After General Grant became President, he appointed Mr. Hudson Minister to the Central American States, a position he held until 1872. He died at Burlington on the 19th of December, 1896.