The Hodgson Clan

Anne Hodgson (1588?-1676). It is not known when she migrated to America. On 21 December 1634 she married the Reverend Thomas Tupper (28 January 1578 – 28 March 1676) in Ipswich in Essex County, Massachusetts. She died on 4 June 1676 in Sandwich, Barnstaple County, Massachusetts. (Source: New England Genealogical and Historical Society files.)

George Hodgson migrated to America from Cambridge, England. With his wife Jane they had children in Massachusetts: Anna, born 30 September 1645 and Abiah, born 3 April 1648. (Sources: A Genealogical Dictionary of The First Settlers of New England, Before 1692; Cambridge Vital Records to 1850.)

Robert Hodgson was born on 21 July 1621 in Linton, Yorkshire. In 1657 the Woodhouse sailed from Bridlington in Yorkshire and stopped on the way in London. After five weeks it reached Long Island. (Source: Log of the Woodhouse in the Devonshire House Library in London.) Among its passengers, Robert Hodgson landed at New Amsterdam (now New York City) on 1 June 1657. Robert's preaching of Quakerism antagonised Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of this Dutch colony. Robert was imprisoned, starved and severely whipped. Freed after five weeks of incarceration, he joined the Quaker group in Rhode Island. He moved to Pennsylvania in 1682 and procured a grant from William Penn of ten square miles on Sassafras Creek, a branch of the Susquehanna, in Chester County. His son John in turn had two sons, Robert and George. Robert remained and died (in about 1691) in Pennsylvania and George moved to North Carolina. (Source: Bowden’s History of Friends in America, Vol. 1.)

George Hodgson was a labourer from Walton-le-Dale, Lancashire, England. He sided with the Jacobite rebels who were attempting to restore the Stuart succession to the throne. The Scottish Jacobite army entered Preston in Lancashire on 9 November 1715. They remained there for several days, during which the government forces advanced upon them. On 14 November the rebel general Thomas Forster surrendered his army to the King's forces. With over six hundred other prisoners, Hodgson was imprisoned in Preston. Many rebels were executed. Hodgson was tried in Liverpool and condemned to be transported to the colonies on 28 January 1716. Transported from Liverpool on the Godspeed on 28 July 1716, he landed in Maryland in 18 October 1716. He was sold there to one John Nelty. (Sources: Samuel Hibbet-Ware, Memorials of the Rebellion, MDCCXV, Manchester: Chetham Society, 1845; Harry Wright Newman, To Maryland From Overseas, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1985, p. 5; https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~ruthann/genealogy/ships/jacobiterebels.htm.)

Matthew Hodgson was born on 16 February 1777 in Featherstone, Yorkshire, England. He arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the Virgin, on 23 April 1819. (Source: ship’s manifest of the Virgin.) He settled in Daleville, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia.

Edward Reginald Hodgson was from Retford, Nottinghamshire, England. With his family he arrived in New York City on 31 May 1836. He died in Illinois in a tornado that wiped out his shop as well. His family moved back to Troy, New York then down to Athens, Georgia, where his descendants still live. (Source: Chris McKinnon cmck@westgov.org and surviving family letters.)

Further information on the earliest Hodgsons to emigrate to the USA will be gratefully received and presented on this website.