The next Thomas Hodgetts was born in 1732. He was 20 years old when England adopted the Gregorian calendar. Catholic countries had done so 170 years earlier but England had stubbornly refused to follow the Pope. The old Julian calendar was now 11 days out of sync with the solar year and the change was made. It involved Wednesday 2 September being followed by Thursday 14 September. New Year’s Day moved, as did the end of financial year. This affected wages, rents, interest, and contracts. Confusion was widespread and some people cried “Give us back our eleven days!”
Thomas married Ann Senay in 1755 in Warwick. While the law had become more tolerant of protestant dissenters, it required that they marry in the Church of England. Over the next ten years, Thomas and Ann’s children were baptised at the Protestant Meeting House, but the births were also entered in the Church of England registers.
| Dates | 1732-1778 |
| Born | 8 Feb 1732 Dudley |
| Lived at | Dudley |
| Occupation | Nail Ironmonger |
| Father | Thomas Hodgetts, shoemaker |
| Mother | Ann BOOTH |
| Spouse | Ann SENAY ~1732-1800 |
| Children | Joseph 1756-1832 Booth 1758-1844 Senay 1760-1809 Thomas 1762-1822 George 1763-? Daniel 1766-1799 Sarah 1773-1848 |
Left: Dudley Town Hall 1760.
Thomas Hodgetts & Ann Senay lived in one of the houses on the right
It’s likely Thomas was a member of the Dudley Book Society, a group of liberal thinkers connected to the Meeting House and dedicated to civil and religious liberty. They circulated books which were “difficult to purchase and dangerous to own.” The society survives to this day, the oldest English one of its type. He was also likely a trustee of Baylies Charity School designed to educate 50 poor boys in the parish.
Thomas followed his great uncle Daniel Payton into the nail ironmonger trade, organising the manufacture of iron into nails by putting it out to nailers. Thomas and Ann lived in High Street which was now characterised by new three-storey houses. They ran the business from the house and had warehouses in Brettnal Lane. They did well and took their eldest son Joseph into partnership when he came of age.
Thomas died at age 46, having made a will only a month beforehand. He made provision for Ann and Joseph to continue the business with his friend Joseph Wainright charged with overseeing the books. The younger sons all had the option of a full partnership as they came of age.
Ann survived Thomas by twenty-two years and continued the business.
Thomas and Ann’s Children
Joseph Hodgetts (1756-1832) continued in the nail ironmongery business. In 1789, he married Elizabeth Rhodes who died in childbirth within the year. Her son (Rhodes Hodgetts) did not survive. Joseph later married Sarah (the daughter of his father’s friend, Joseph Wainright) with whom he had a son and four daughters. Joseph was a trustee of the Baylies Charity School. After Sarah died in 1811, Joseph moved to London where he lived for many years, finishing his life at Oakham Cottage in Dudley where he died in 1832, possibly in the cholera outbreak that year. He is buried with Sarah and his father at St Edmund’s.
His son, Joseph Wainright Hodgetts was a manufacturing chemist of some scientific fame who died in an explosion in 1851 while working with hydro-carbon gas. Alfred (son of Joseph Wainright Hodgetts) lived at St Bees in Cumbria where he built a substantial building as a Liberal club now known as “Hodgetts Hall”.
Seney Hodgetts (1760-1809) inherited a property at Fishers Farm and married Daniel Parsons, an ironmonger. They had no children and Seney devoted her time to working with the poor. She died in 1809 with a glowing obituary. Daniel left substantial money in trust for the establishment of a school from which the Daniel Parsons Educational Charity continues to this day.
Thomas Hodgetts (1762-1822) was originally a surgeon but combined this with his heritage to become an ironmonger specialising in surgery implements. He lived in Bristol and, in 1794, married Mary Wright, the daughter of a dissenting minister at Mancetter. They had ten children including a daughter named Harriet Senay Hodgetts.
George Hodgetts was born in 1763 and must have died in infancy.
Daniel Hodgetts (1766-1799) inherited land at Cawney’s Field and was a Dudley maltster and hop merchant; he died unmarried at age 33.
Sarah Hodgetts (~1773-1848) appears to have been the youngest child. There is no record of her birth which was likely in 1773 when the Old Meeting House register has a gap. She inherited the family’s High Street house with the family business to continue there until her 21st birthday when her brothers had the option to buy her out. She married grocer John Twamley in 1798; they had seven children including Anne Senay Twamley and Charles Twamley who wrote a History of Dudley Castle and Priory in 1867.
I descend from Thomas and Ann’s second son Booth Hodgetts, but before we meet him, let’s meet his in-laws.
Sources & Notes
Arthur A. Rollason, “The Old Meeting House Wolverhampton Street Dudley”, 1899 Black Country Unitarians, Rtd 28/4/2021.
Daniel Parsons school and charity: George Eyre Evans, Midland Churches: A History of the Congregations on the Roll of the Midland Christian Union, Dudley 1899, p113; Dudley Rotary (Rtd 28/4/2021); The Parliamentary Gazetteer of England and Wales 1851, Dudley Family History Guide Rtd 28/4/2021.