Nat. Hudson, the subject of this sketch, was born in Polk County, Oregon, August 20, 1852, and is near 46 years of age. Commencing when only 13 years old, he served 18 years as an apprentice and journeyman blacksmith and machinist, working at various times in the larger towns cities of the Pacific Coast. While working at his he studied late during his spare time, and in 1882 admitted to practice in the Oregon Supreme Court in the same class with Judge M. D. Clifford, Paul Deady and others. In May, 1884, he was, on motion of ex-governor Geo. L. Woods, admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of California, and also holds a certificate from the Hon. Secretary of the Interior at Washington D. C., entitling him to appear as an attorney in legal business before the Department. Mr. Hudson’s chief claim to popularity however is his connection with the Sumpter News, now its third volume, which he established there when that thriving town of seven hundred or more people only contained a population of about fifty inhabitants. The paper on its first appearance was only 8×11 inches, a fit representative of the little hamlet in which it first saw the light, but under the skillful business management and through the untiring energy and perseverance of its proprietor, it has been gradually enlarged until it now occupies the enviable position of being the largest weekly newspaper published in Baker County, and Nat, as the boys familiarly call him, declares that he will yet make it a bigger paper than the Oregonian. The Sumpter News is eight page, six column weekly, and will soon be enlarged ten and most likely to twelve pages, all replete with general telegraphic news of the world and the local mining news of the rich mineral region in which it is published. It has recently been equipped with a fine large cylinder power press, job presses, over seventy fonts of job and advertising type, and all the paraphernalia of a first class news and job office, representing an investment of more than four thousand dollars, and the news may justly claim to be one of the leading agencies in the wonderful growth of the town of Sumpter.
