San
Joaquin County
Biographies
THOMAS M. HODGSON
Among the successful vineyardists of
the Lodi section of San Joaquin County is Thomas M. Hodgson, who resides on his
well-improved ranch of fourteen acres five miles south of Lodi on Douglas
Avenue. Starting out in life with the
handicap of being orphaned when a child, he steadily worked his way upward,
gaining success and winning the public confidence. He was born in Stockton, December 18, 1872, a
son of W. T. and Hetty (Stanaway)
Hodgson, the former a native of London, England, who came to California in
1852. His mother was a daughter of J. G.
Stanaway of Milton, California, who lived to be 101
years old. Hetty
Stanaway was born under the British flag on the high
seas enroute from Australia to California in the early ‘50s. The father was the foreman on the Judge Creaner place and passed away at the age of
forty-five. The mother died at the age
of thirty, leaving four children: Alice,
Mrs. J. B. Ashworth of Mariposa, California; Thomas M., of this sketch; Eunice
died at the age of fourteen; Melvin died at the age of one year.
Thomas M. was five years old when
his mother died and he was placed in the Sacramento Orphans Home, where he
remained for two years and then was adopted by a man by the name of Peter Fink
of Kings River, who so cruelly treated the lad that at the age of nine years he
ran away. He found work on a cattle
ranch herding stock on the stubble fields about thirteen miles from Fresno,
where he worked for five years; he then went to Reno, Nevada, and rode the
range and did all kinds of ranch work.
In 1897 he returned to California, where he found employment at Yosemite
National Park and later in the Princeton mines, Mariposa County, until 1902.
On September 25, 1902, in
Watsonville, California, Mr. Hodgson was married to Miss Annie Hill, born in
Mariposa County, a daughter of E. V. Hill and his wife Jane (Quick) Hill, both
natives of California. Her mother’s family were early pioneers of California and Mrs. Hodgson received
her education in the district schools of Mariposa and Watsonville,
California. In 1903, Mr. Hodgson
established a grocery business at the corner of Grant and Main streets,
Stockton, but this did not prove a very successful undertaking and in the fall
of the same year removed to the Live Oak school district north of Stockton,
where he bought fourteen acres of land.
This Mr. Hodgson set about to improve; he built a house with his own
hands and also built other necessary farm buildings and has developed the
entire fourteen acres to a Tokay vineyard.
Later he purchased twenty-five acres on the Eight-mile Road, ten acres
of which he has set to vineyard and the balance of fifteen acres is used for
grain raising.
Mr. and Mrs. Hodgson are the parents of five children: Mabel; Hetty, Mrs. E. M. Cormeny,
resides in Stockton; Thomas M., Jr.; Dorothy; and William, deceased at the age
of five years. Mr. Hodgson is a
Republican in politics and fraternally is a member of the Modern Woodmen of the
World.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
743-744. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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