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Hodge Family History

By Nick Hodge | June 10, 2006

Hodge Fam­ily His­tory Research

As I gather data, I’ll throw it here. It will also appear in search engines — and we’ll see what link­ages and com­ments appear from all and sundry!

This data shows that Liam is a 6th gen­er­a­tion Aus­tralian, on his father’s side, and has roots into the Lutheran-German com­munity now in South Aus­tralia. I can con­fid­ently show Liam’s ancest­ors to 1686: 9 gen­er­a­tions back in time; always on the far east­ern shores of Fife, Scotland.

From Rel­at­ives who found this page, and have provided more inform­a­tion:

• Meet Mary Milne, my Great– Great– Great– Grandmother
• Meet David Melville Hodge. My Great-Great-Grandfather
• Hodge Fam­ily His­tory Update — Novem­ber 2008
• Private Angus Hodge

From research:

Accord­ing to Whats in your name?, Hodge means: [also Hodg, Hoge, Hog]

Eng­lish, pat­ronymic derived from HODGE, the com­mon nick­name for ROGER ‘fame, spear’; the name was made pop­u­lar after the Nor­man Con­quest by Roger of Mont­gomery who dis­tin­guished him­self at the Battle of Hast­ings.
Also, accord­ing to Hodge
Hodge/Hudge/Hodgin/Hodgen: Eng­lish Pat­ronymic name from the pet name Hodge, which was derived from the given name Roger. Roger came to Eng­land as Rogier cour­tesy of the con­quer­ing Normans.

In ref­er­ence to Hodge Hill Com­mon: a pre­cious piece of undeveloped land around the junc­tion of the Cole­shill Road and Brom­ford Road. Hodge is prob­ably the fam­ily name of a medi­eval landowner, but this was also a by-name of Roger, used as a pat­ron­ising nick­name for an agri­cul­tural labourer, ie. ‘a coun­try bumpkin’.

“Hodg” is a ser­vant men­tioned in this 1575 doc­u­ment.

 

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Melville Hodge, son of John, father of David Melville Hodge came out on the Joseph Rowan to Adelaide on June 16th 1854 from County Fife Scot­land via Liv­er­pool (County Fife). It looks like he wasn’t alone: Joseph Rowan Search; there were 376 other gov­ern­ment immig­rants into a colony that had just been pro­nounced (South Aus­tralia, 1836) and found gold (1851). His occu­pa­tion was described as Plough­man and Miner, and reli­gion as Pres­be­tyrian. He was 51 when he arrived in Aus­tralia, had a son when he was 57 and died later in the same year. The name is some­times writ­ten down as: Melvil Hodge, Melvill Hodge or Melville Hodge.

Janet Crom­bie died of bowel inflam­ma­tion at sea on the 28th March 1854, only 7 days out of Liv­er­pool. Only one other per­son died on this voy­age. Her age was lis­ted as 48 years old; although she was 58 if the birth cer­ti­fic­ate is correct.

On the Josepth Rowan are Jessie Hodge (21, a ser­vant) and a Melville Hodge (47, Farm Labourer). It may be pos­sible Janet was also known as Jessie. Where is Melville’s other son, Thomas Hodge? He seems to have gone miss­ing, and cer­tainly did not emig­rate at the same time as Melville.

A recent search in the 1841 Scot­land Census shows that Melvill was mar­ried to a Janet Crom­bie in 28th Decem­ber 1828, and at this time had two chil­dren: Janet (born 8th Sep 1836) and a younger Thomas (born to Melvil and Janet on 23rd Decem­ber 1834 in par­ish of Cameron, Fife, Scot­land). Other census details: Where born: Fife, Scot­land; Civil par­ish: Mon­i­mail; County: Fife; Address: Carslo­gie O Its Cot­tages; Occu­pa­tion: Ag Lab [Agri­cul­tural Labourer].

From Google Maps, there is Carslo­gie Road com­ing from a town called Cupar. Carslo­gie Road, For­far, Scot­land. A sim­ilar search of this county/region of a sim­ilar age returns: ‘Culross — Saint Cyrus’, A Topo­graph­ical Dic­tion­ary of Scot­land (1846). Mon­i­mail is a par­ish to the west of the town of Cupar; and the Carslo­gie Cot­tage is now in ruins on this road. By 1851, 3 years before the fam­ily moved to South Aus­tralia, he had moved to Leuchars; Janet was 42, he was 40 and Thomas was 15. Both Thomas and Melville are lis­ted at Agi­cul­tural labourers.

Apart from Fife’s wild his­tory, fur­ther research about this Carslo­gie and Cupar (It is pro­nounced Cooper!) brings us to his­tory: His­tory of Cupar Par­ish Church

Fur­ther research is inter­est­ing. (at Scots Ori­gins) A Melvil Hodge (note the recor­ded spelling) has a birth registered on 23rd Novem­ber 1803, son of a John Hodge and Elspeth Clark (mar­ried 29 March 1793).
The par­ish, St. Andrews And St. Leonards, is strangely in the region where golf was inven­ted! The east-coast of Scot­land. This school, hav­ing sim­ilar name to the par­ish, has an inter­est­ing loc­a­tion map St Andrews & St Leonards Par­ish School and Par­ishes of Fife, Scot­land. The Fife Fam­ily His­tory Soci­ety provides an inter­est­ing per­spect­ive on the life and times of the shire, includ­ing indus­tries etc. dur­ing Melvil’s lifetime.

John Hodge, born in the same par­ish, 28th March 1771 to a James Hodge and Mary Scot. No record found of a James Hodge birth in this par­ish (although there are many James Hodge’s in the county of Fife within the range of years, and the only James Hodge in Kings­barn is too young to be mar­ried in 1763), but there is a record of a birth of Mary Scot on 24th April 1753 in this par­ish to a Hary Scott and Mary Sivess. James Hodge mar­ried Mary Scot at Kings­barn, Fife, Scot­land on 23 Novem­ber 1763. Kings­barn par­ish is dir­ectly to the east of St Andrews.

Janet Crom­bie born 1806, mar­ried Melville on 28 Decem­ber 1828 at St. Andrews And St. Leonards, Fife, Scot­land and evid­ently died at sea. On this voy­age there is also a Thomas described as a agri­cul­tural labourer and a Jessie described as a ser­vant. (born 1836, died in 1854 at about 18 years of age in Scot­land — there­fore not on the voy­age? There is no record of par­ent­age in the data­base, so it could be a dif­fer­ent person)

So what drove Melvil Hodge to leave Fife in Scot­land? 1854 is about the same time as the Crimean War, and by my cal­cu­la­tions he was at least 45–50 when he left Scot­land. A rather old age (in those times) to up and leave. Hodges in Fife, Scot­land. If his daugh­ter, Jessie died in 1854 as recor­ded, did they leave for other reas­ons? This story about Car­oline Par­ish provides a per­spect­ive on the mid 19th century.

Melvil remar­ried a Mary Milne (born 26th Decem­ber 1830 in For­Far, Angus, Scot­land) whose mother was a Jean Stew­art and father James Milne which with my new info comes up in the fam­ily, which seem to have come out on the same boat.

Melville him­self died in 1860 and Mary remar­ried a James Couz­ins. David Melville Hodge left home at about 11 due to not get­ting on with his step father but he got mar­ried at his stepfather’s home.

David Melville Hodge, born 18 Oct 1860, Cock­a­too Valley/North Rhine, South Aus­tralia. Died 6th Septem­ber 1937. Mar­ried Julia Florence Pil­grim 2 Octo­ber 1885, Clare, South Aus­tralia. (par­ents: John Pil­grim born Essex 13 Apr 1834 and Judith Brown, Naomi Frost born Essex 26 Apr 1831)

David Melville was a miner of sorts. He went to Broken Hill and also went by boat up to the Kim­ber­leys; the fam­ily has of a diary that he wrote about this trip. He also wrote poetry, and was a bit of a wan­der­lust. Fam­ily talk is that he had a fierce tem­per and would whip a bul­lock til it fell. After liv­ing in the Mid­north of South Aus­tralia, he then “retired’ in Adelaide, and sube­quently pur­chased land over on the Lock-Elliston road with his sons.

The last piece of farm­ing land on Eyre Pen­in­sula owned by this Hodge fam­ily was Sec­tion 36, Hun­dred of Cowan, Dis­trict Coun­cil of Ellis­ton (Eyre Pen­in­sula, South Aus­tralia). This prop­erty bordered the Bascombe Well Con­ser­va­tion Park on the western-side of the centre line (rail­way line) that splits Eyre Pen­in­sula in two. The prop­erty was bordered the “west­ern side” of the Dog Fence run­ning from south to north on Eyre Pen­in­sula. This side of the Dog Fence is where the din­gos where “free to roam” and eat sheep. The east­ern side was pro­tec­ted from the din­gos due to the fine almost chain-link fencing.

 

---

On my mother’s side, one fam­ily came out to South Aus­tralia from Silesia. They were Wends in 1848 on the ship “Vic­toria”. On the other branch of my mother’s fam­ily, only 2 broth­ers came out and their par­ents are not known. They came out from Prus­sia in 1860 on the “Emmy”. One was a cooper by trade.

 

 

 

The Wends, accord­ing to Wiki­pe­dia, is a trans­lit­er­a­tion of Van­dals. So, on my mother’s side — our ancen­stors van­dal­ised the known, civ­il­ised Roman world. Cool. If you know my mum, you know exactly out of char­ac­ter this is!

There is a say­ing in my fam­ily: if you’re Ger­man and from South Aus­tralia, then we’re prob­ably related. Some­how! Flee­ing per­se­cu­tion of a state-mandated Cath­olic reli­gion (there was noth­ing scar­ier to a Luther­ans in the 16th through 19th cen­tury than Cath­olic over­lords), many emig­rated to South Aus­tralia. More info is here: Ger­mans in Poland

From The top Shiraz from Down Under by Michael Franz of the The Wash­ing­ton Post

The place itself is a study in con­trasts. Most winer­ies are stun­ningly mod­ern, at least on the inside, with futur­istic labor­at­or­ies and all man­ner of glisten­ing steel giz­mos. But if you take a walk down the street of a Barossa town, past an old stone Lutheran church and shops selling everything from stru­del to sauer­braten, you’d swear the place was trans­planted from 19th-century Prussia.

And in essence you’d be cor­rect. The Barossa was settled in the mid-19th cen­tury by entire towns from Silesia (now part of Poland), led by Lutheran pas­tors who pre­ferred relo­ca­tion to adopt­ing the revised reli­gious ser­vice man­dated by Prus­sian King Fre­d­er­ick Wil­helm III. The land was sur­veyed and the towns were laid out even before the set­tlers arrived, and every fam­ily received about 30 acres. These plots were prudently planted with sev­eral dif­fer­ent crops, and wine grapes were almost always included.

Topics: family, history, mungenet | 5 Comments »