GEORGE HARRISON HODGES. One of
the representative farmers of Clay county whose dominions partly
encircle the village of Vashti and whose advent to the county gave a
substantial impetus to his community’s business and social life is
George H. Hodges, the worthy subject of this review. While only a dozen
years mark his citizenship here, his presence and his personal influence
are as marked as though the cloak of the patriarchal pioneer covered his
strong and active frame.
Although Clay county knew Mr. Hodges no earlier than 1893, Texas has
known him since January, 1874, when he identified himself with Navarro
county. Choctaw county, Mississippi, furnished him among her quota to
the Lone Star state of that year and he came with sincere motives of
carving out an honored future and, it might be, accumulating a modest
fortune in a land where opportunities were literally hanging on every
bush. A strong physique and a willing hand were his chief capital and to
his industrial touch the natural elements and the soil itself responded
with liberality, and the rough-hewing of his path portended the destiny
that was surely his. Beginning life at the age of seventeen, he spent
the years till his majority in the employ of an uncle, Dock Stewart,
with whom he came to Texas and from whom he received, in wages, the
nucleus of his real start in life.
Eight months a pupil in a rural school gave him a very crude finish for
the world of affairs, but he took counsel from experience and has
condition in the present shows how successfully he has met the problems
of the past. He grew up with his maternal grandfather on a plantation
and it was but natural that he should seek advantage on the farm in his
western home. He settled near Purdon, in Navarro county, and, in 1876,
he joined a brother in the purchase of a tract of black-waxy land which
he occupied until 1881, when he turned his interest into cash and
purchased a farm with a cotton gin and other improvements on, and this
he sold after his advent to Clay county. In 1890 he visited Clay and
bought, or bargained for, his new home, but fearing he could not pay for
it out of the soil he remained for the farm and then transferred his
residence hither. In the beginning here he purchased a gin, moved it to
Vashti and operated it till 1901, when be bought another tract near town
of three hundred and twenty acres north of the little village where he
maintains his home. His material prosperity has enabled him to become
the owner of six hundred and eighty acres, improved with tenement houses
and everything necessary for its proper cultivation and care.
September 6, 1851, George H. Hodges was born in Choctaw county,
Mississippi. His father, Richard Hodges, settled there from Alabama when
Choctaw county was new an died in the Confederate service in Mobile, in
1865. Richard Hodges went to Mississippi when a boy and married there
Eliza Jane Levor, who died in 1853 in Choctaw county, Mississippi. She
was a daughter of Joseph Levor, an Alabama settler who died in 1867,
some four years subsequent to the death of our subject’s paternal
grandfather, Richard Hodges.
The issue of Richard and Eliza Hodges were: Joseph, who went through the
war as a Confederate soldier and in 1867 moved to Navarro county, Texas,
where he still lives; William, who was in the Confederate army during
the last year of the war and died soon after in Yalobusha county,
Mississippi; John S., of Mills county, Texas, and George H., our
subject.
In December, 1878, George H. Hodges married his first wife, Fannie
Patterson, a daughter of Samuel Patterson, who settled in Navarro county
from Newton county, Mississippi, where his daughter Fannie was born in
October, 1860. In June, 1890, Mrs. Hodges passed away in Navarro, being
the mother of Annie, wife of J. B. Wardworth, of Clay County, with
issue, Ray, Wessie and Otto; Mattie, who married S. H. Manning, of Clay
county, has a daughter, Lotus; Maggie, unmarried; Laura, now Mrs. James
Honn, of Clay county, has a daughter, Jewel; Samuel is the youngest
child. In January, 1891, Mr. Hodges married his present wife, nee Laura
Patterson, orphaned in childhood and a cousin of his first wife. The
result of this union has been five children, namely: Susie, Homer, Ray,
Rue and Earl.
Mr. Hodges takes no active interest in politics, but owns allegiance to
Democracy, and in church affairs is a Methodist. His citizenship is of
the sincere, loyal and progressive sort and he yields precedence to no
man in his faith in Northern Texas and in the belief in its ultimate
destiny.
Notes:
- B. B. Paddock,
History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas
(Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 556-557.
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