Tom Hodson was born 1804, North Scarle, a village on the Nottinghamshire-Lincolnshire border.

He spent most of his life as a Missionary at Goobbe, Mysore, India. This is to some extent documented in “Old Daniel”. He first arrived there 1st September 1836, and in April 1837 he and his wife went to live there permanently. Mrs Hodson laid the foundation brick of the Goobbe Mission House on the 24th of May, 1838. At one point, in 1851, the Goobbe Mission was closed down due to a cash crisis in the Missionary Society, but a few years later it was started up again, and Hodson came out again to India to continue his work at Goobbe. He landed at Madras January 1st 1854, visited Goobbe 16th April 1855, and preached the opening sermon 1st June 1860.

He was reported in the 1881 Census as living at 57 Avenue Villas, Nottingham Road, Mansfield, Nottingham. He was then 77 and was living at this address with his wife Sophia aged 45 who was born in Newark, his daughter Margaret aged 10 born in Bangalore, India, and they had a general domestic servant Eliza Fox who was 22 and was born in Elston, Nottinghamshire.

It states quite clearly in “Old Daniel” that the mission house at Goobbe was opened by Mrs. Hodson in 1838, so we must conclude either that Sophia was his second wife, the first having presumably died, or that she was the wife of a son of his, which is the more likely.

The Reverend Thomas Hodson, a Wesleyan Missionary, died 9 September 1882 in Mansfield, Notts., England.

A descendant of his is Faye Chudleigh, Christchurch, NZ

---