History
Athens is a small village across the Hudson River from the city of Hudson. Those days it was a busy town. It had thirteen ice houses, four brick yards, three ship yards, a cotton mill and a machine shop. It also had four hotels. One hotel belonged to a man call Hardy Stewart. His hotel was on a corner near the river. He had three cows. Of course, you know there were no automobiles at that time. Well, every morning at about eight o’clock his hired man would drive those cows right up through Main Street to the top of the hill to a pasture. In the late afternoon the man would come back down and drive those cows back to Mr. Stewart's barn.
-- Excerpt from letter by Warren W. Tranis 1905.
