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John went to Boston,  had some handbills printed,  and returned home,  where he advertised a concert with the Milford Brass Band.  This was followed by a series of engagements in southern New Hampshire.  He took courage from this short tour and on October 26, 1849, started another.  Soon he was in Hartford, where Abby and Ludlow were stopping.

John arranged for Ludlow to act as his agent.  The tour began on November 2 and would lead through Connecticut into Massachusetts.  Jesse met John at Litchfield and,  for a time,  took over handling his business.  This was a significant trip,  and it was 1850 before John started for home.

Restless as ever,  John spent only a few days in Milford before he set out again.  On February 16,  at Lyceum Hall in Lynn,  he sang to an audience of 600.

On the 20th,  the brothers met in Boston and took the train for New York to rescue Abby from her leisure.  They went to the Pattons' boarding place but were directed forty miles up the Hudson to the home of Duncan McMartin at Rockland Lake.  Arriving by moonlight, Asa walked to the door and rang the bell, while his brothers withdrew into the shadows.  He asked for directions to the steamboat landing.  "By the way, there is a man named Patton stopping at your house, is there not?"   "Yes.  Won't you drop in and see him?"  Thanking McMartin, Asa declined.  He said he supposed that Mrs. Patton was there too, and was told that she was.  Then Asa said his goodbyes and hurried on his way.

Later,  McMartin and company heard music  -  "Oh, open the window and hear the ringing,  Sister dear,  O sister dear!"  Hurrying to the door, Abby responded by singing, "Welcome, brothers, welcome."  And indeed they were welcomed into the McMartin home, where they remained for several days.  Not all went according to plan, though  -  the brothers were unable to obtain an agreement with the Pattons for Abby to go on tour with them.

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On the 25th,  the brothers traveled to Poughkeepsie.   Abby and Ludlow returned to New York;  and around this time Jesse arrived to take charge as the trio's business agent.

After a performance at Newburgh on March 2,  the singers' spirits were low.   As they sat in silence, a voice came as if out of nowhere.   "Sing, sing, what shall I sing?  The cat's run away with the pudding-bag string!"   The voice belonged to Abby.  But where was she?   Asa ran to the door, and the others checked down the corridors.  Finally someone found the Pattons under the bed, no doubt laughing.  After greetings were exchanged, Abby told her brothers she would rejoin the group soon.

On Friday, March 22, 1850,  the Hutchinson Family quartet,  complete with Abby,  opened a series of concerts in New York,  performing first at Niblo's and then giving frequent entertainments at the Broadway Tabernacle and also singing at Rutgers Institute.  In Brooklyn they sang several times at Plymouth Church,  the pastor being Henry Ward Beecher.

By this time the group was singing  "The Good Old Days of Yore."   Usually Jesse's verses  -  those sung in concert by the quartet  -  were about issues, events, and the times.  But he wrote this fine song when mourning the recent loss of his young son, James.

As Jesse's new composition was one inspired by grief,  around this same time the Hutchinsons introduced another piece that was delightfully ridiculous.  It was  "The Horticultural Wife."

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After engagements in the Albany area, the quartet returned to New York City for a series of concerts and to attend the May antislavery anniversary.  The first morning, William Lloyd Garrison was the opening speaker.  Suddenly the notorious  "Captain" Isaiah Rynders  tried to break up the meeting, causing great disorder.  The Hutchinson Family, sitting in the center of the upper tier of seats, rose and sang a song.  The great hall quieted, and eyes turned to the singers.  Rynders stepped off the platform and walked up the aisle toward them.  When he got close enough so they could hear him, he shouted:  "Stop that ------ psalm singing!"  Since the Hutchinsons' only goal was to create a diversion, which they did, they sat down.

Artist and writer Frank Carpenter said that Abby  "would look directly into the eyes of the mob leaders, invariably with the effect of subduing the unruly spirits."

During this New York stop,  the Hutchinsons spent a pleasant weekend with Horace Greeley at the North American Phalanx in New Jersey.  They were impressed by its farm and the accommodations.  On Sunday,  Greeley gave an address and the group sang.

The quartet gave concerts at Apollo Hall,  the Brooklyn Institute,  and Williamsburgh's Central Hall.  On the 23rd,  they left for appearances in the cities of Connecticut and in Springfield and Worcester, Massachusetts.

In June the brothers,  without Abby,  began another tour.  They gave a series of entertainments in the North Shore communities of Massachusetts and then sang their way through the western part of that state and Connecticut.

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That summer,  the group made another trip,  starting with some pleasing concerts with Abby in Stonington, Connecticut.  Mixing business with pleasure, as usual, they went bluefishing with Ludlow's father, Rev. William Patton, Sr.   John remembered:

Judson had an otherworldly aura.  We have seen that his grim sketch of two coffins,  head to head,  seemed to be taken as an omen of the deaths of Brother Benjamin and of Rhoda's husband,  Isaac Bartlett.  Now he has shown that he can call monsters up out of the deep.

A lighter example is Judson's ability to do the impossible with his voice.  "He had great ventriloqual powers,"  wrote John,  "and made good use of them in his concert work. . . . "   "The ventriloquial effects,"  said an English journalist,  "were perfectly deceptive and you might easily have believed that 'From the sky, serene and far, A voice fell like a falling star'. . . . "   The experience lived long in the memory of those who heard it.

Judson's daughter  Kate  recalled sitting in the audience on an occasion when John performed  "The Ship on Fire."

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In September,  the brothers made a trip to New York.   P. T. Barnum had brought  Jenny Lind  to America for a concert tour, and the city was in a state of Jennymania.  Barnum escorted the Hutchinsons to her hotel on the 21st, and the group sang  "The Cot Where We Were Born"  and Jesse's  "Welcome to Jenny Lind."

Earlier in the year,  the Fox sisters visited New York;  and,  in the company of Horace Greeley,  they demonstrated spirit manifestations to the public.  Now,  as this Hutchinson Family tour was getting under way,  Jesse  -  traveling ahead of the group  -  was with Greeley in Syracuse.  Shortly after their parting comes our earliest record of interest and involvement in modern spiritualism by a member of the family.

In Rochester,  on Sunday, September 29,  Jesse attended a demonstration of the spirit rappings at the house of Leah Fish,  the eldest of the Fox sisters.  That evening he had yet another encounter with the spirits, at the house of his friend Isaac Post.  He received a communication purporting to be from the late Benjamin Hutchinson,  with a message for his brothers and sister not to doubt the manifestations, and to know that he watched over them daily.

Jesse closed with this sentiment:  "[T]o many a soul,  bereaved as mine has been,  this spiritual manifestation will prove a most acceptable, cheering and welcome visitor."