Laban Paddock

117 Union Street. Residence of Laban Paddock and later Dawn Langley Simmons. The lookout is no longer on the house.

Stephen Paddock’s second son was also seafaring and became quite wealthy. Laban Paddock (1770-1861) became the president of the Hudson Whaling Company in 1829. He was also president of the Bank of Columbia. He had a house built at what is now 117 Union Street and could watch his ships returning from a lookout at the back of the house.

Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, a character she played in several movies in the 1960s

In 1981, with proceeds from the published biography she wrote of her adoptive mother, British Academy Award winning actress Margaret Rutherford, Dawn Langley Simmons (1922-2000), purchased 117 Union Street “as is” for $11,500. She moved there with her “daughter, a dog, a cat and a pet rabbit” from New York City. Dawn was raised in England as a boy, but identified as a woman and was described in a New York Times obituary as “a person around whom legends swirled”. She found a home in Hudson, as so many have, for a time.