GEORGE HUDSON

'THE RAILWAY KING'

200 YEARS 1800 - 2000

George Hudson was born at Howsham, in the parish of Scrayingham in the East Riding of Yorkshire, between York and Malton on Monday the 10th March 1800.  He was the youngest son of the High Constable of Buckrose, John Hudson (an hereditary position), and his wife Elizabeth Ruston.   Elizabeth and John (1756-1808) died when he was quite young.  Elizabeth (1768-1806) came from a large farming family from Bugthorpe near by.  Her mother was a member of the Bottrell family, another successful farming family.  Indeed an uncle, Matthew Bottrill lived quite prosperously in York as a gentleman.  George was left £1000 by his father, which he was to come into when he was 21.

A transcription of John Hudson's Will is here, in pdf form.

George left Howsham in 1815 to serve as an apprentice at a drapers shop in York.  The shop was situated in College Street near to St William's College.  By the time he was 21 he was a partner in the business.   He married his partner's sister, Elizabeth Nicholson,  in 1821, when he was 21 and she five years older.  They had seven children, but no grandchildren.  The business continued to prosper.

College Street (left) is situated a few hundred yards from Monkgate, a prosperous street which is still there today.  In one house lived George's great-uncle, Matthew Bottrill, a wealthy gentleman farmer.  Before he died in 1827 Bottrill made a  will which greatly favoured George Hudson and was to result in Hudson being a rather wealthy man.  This was regarded as being rather suspicious at the time considering that old Matthew had relatives nearer in blood.   But Hudson was on the doorstep and probably provided the old man with support in his last months.

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This page is compiled by Timothy J. Owston of York, England.