Several years ago I was approached by my distance cousin, Donald F. "Don" Hodge, about updating my William Hodge line. I had no idea that we would endeavor to update most of the descendants of Henry Hodge. We started out with the original work of Barbara Roach Knox, author of Robert Hodge et al of Livingston County Kentucky and with some updated research that Don and several other researchers had been working on. We eventually ended up with this and the research is far from being finished.

  I was very fortunate to meet John Spencer some time back on the Hodge message board. John, a descendant of Dr. Alphonso Hodge, had been trying to tie his great grandfather into our family. All of that is now history since Alphonso was proven to be the son of James Hodge and his wife Mary J.W. Campbell.   I would like to thank my cousin Cindy Wilcoxen for her outstanding research ability during our long hours of work on our William and Nancy (Dancy) Hodge family. Also, a special thanks to Mrs. Carolyn (Campbell) White, a descendant of James and Mary (Campbell) Hodge, a very competent and  thorough researcher. Earl Hodges of Liberty Hill, Texas for his details on the family of John Allen Hodges. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Thomas Hamm of Spiceland, Indiana, a descendant of Thomas Hodges Esq. of Edgecombe Co., NC., for sharing his vast research.

Few children obtained land through inheritance. If the father died intestate, all the land went to the eldest son under the law of Primogeniture. Younger males would obtain land grants or migrate to the new frontier. You worked and farmed or learned a trade until adulthood. Then you would marry and while raising a large family to help with the farm; you would attempt to obtain more land. If you were fortunate, and owned slaves to engage in the farm work then you could educate your children. If by the age of 50 you were still alive, you would retire by selling your established plantation and moving to town. If you were fortune enough to have someone in the family who could read and write then you would maintain a family bible to record the marriages, births and deaths. If not one in the family could read or write, which usually was the case, than the only record of your existence would be from government or church records.

   What was typical of this family in its early recordable existence in North Carolina and Kentucky was the Scot-Irish naming pattern. As children were born, they were named for a predetermined person. The pattern for the most part in this family was for the two eldest sons to be named after their grandfathers and the third after the father. The most prevalent names used by this family are Henry, Harry, Gustavas, Gus or a combination of these names (i.e. Henry Gustavus). Sometimes they made up names or feminized family names and gave them to their daughter (i.e. William Ann). The families tended to travel together or end up where a central family head was living. We see this in Robert Hodge Sr, Captain Robert Hodge in Navarro County, Texas and Fidelio Hodge in Vanderburgh County, Indiana. Using this pattern has helped to identify families and relationships between families.

Attention HODGE(S) Researchers, have you hit a brick wall while searching for your roots in North Carolina or Virginia? Do you have a male Hodge that is willing to submit his DNA for analylsis? Visit the Hodges DNA Project at http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/h/hodges/rec.html.

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West Marine