October 19, 2023, Hudson, NY: Today’s city residents may be unaware that, before our city’s outstanding Hudson Area Library was established, there was another free public library, and it was located in a handsome and imposing brick federal structure at 113 Warren Street on a particularly beautiful block near the waterfront. That’s the Robert Jenkins House, which is the chapter house of the Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.
Recently the chapter’s historian Doris Krohn Harrington, MS compiled a comprehensive illustrated history of the chapter’s library, and that document is now being made available for public viewing. It can be found on the chapter’s website at hudson-dar.org/library.
“The Hendrick Hudson Library Story” tells the early history of libraries in Hudson. In 1793, soon after becoming a city and being renamed Hudson, the City of Hudson gained a subscription library called the Columbia Library. In 1797 came the Hudson Library Society, on the board of which served Robert Jenkins himself. There was the Franklin Library Association in 1837, which occupied several city locations before migrating to the Fourth Street Public School Building. In 1898, that library was given to the brand-new Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the DAR, which operated it as the city’s first and only library that was free and open to the public.
Two short years later, in 1900, the Robert Jenkins House was gifted to the chapter as a site for its library, a museum, and a meeting place. The chapter’s library transferred there, operating as the city’s only free public library until 1959, when the Hudson Area Library was established at 400 State Street. In 2016 the Hudson Area Library moved to its current location at the armory at 51 N Fifth St.
The chapter benefactor who gifted the house was Frances Chester White Hartley, who was the granddaughter of Robert Jenkins, the house’s builder. It was in that very house that, decades earlier, Hartley had been born. Since 1959, the library, which beginning at that point restricted its offerings to those of a historical and genealogical nature, having given 10,000 of its general-interest volumes to the Hudson Area Library, has remained open to the public and continues to be free of charge.
The Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the DAR was chartered in 1896. The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution is a nonprofit, nonpartisan women’s volunteer service organization welcoming eligible women without regard to race, creed, or religion. The Hendrick Hudson Chapter includes 131 members who trace their lineage back to a patriot in the American Revolution–whether serving as soldier, shopkeeper, or seamstress. The mission of the DAR is to promote historic preservation, education, and patriotism.
The chapter and the chapter house can be accessed at hudson-dar.org, facebook.com/HudsonDAR, instagram.com/robertjenkinshouse, hendrickhudsonchapterdar@gmail.com, and (518) 828-9764.
Hendrick Hudson Chapter, NSDAR 