Richard. Richardi Hodgson

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Richard 'Richardi' Hodgson (1664–1720), a 9× great-grandfather of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth and death in Bradford, Yorkshire, his marriage to Mary Stanes Fearnley, his son James, and historical context concerning late Stuart and early Georgian England. Notable: long Yorkshire/Bradford Cathedral parish connection.

Richard Hodgson, recorded in certain ecclesiastical entries under the Latinized form Richardi Hodgson, was born on the 5th of February, 1664, in Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He lived the whole of his life of fifty-six years within that ancient wool-trading town, and at his death on the 2nd of November, 1720, was laid to rest at Bradford, St Peter — the parish church now known as Bradford Cathedral — which had served as the spiritual center of the community since the medieval period.

The Bradford of Richard's lifetime was a modest market town on the cusp of transformation. Long associated with the woollen and worsted trades, the West Riding in the latter seventeenth century saw cottage weaving expand into something approaching a regional industry, though the great mills and the booming Bradford of the nineteenth century lay still well in the future. Richard's life spanned a particularly turbulent stretch of English history: the Restoration court of Charles II, the brief reign of James II, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the union of England and Scotland in 1707, and the early Hanoverian succession of 1714. Bradford parish records from this period reflect a community shaped equally by Anglican conformity and by the strong dissenting traditions then taking root across Yorkshire.

Richard married Mary Stanes Fearnley, and from their union came at least one recorded son, James Hodgson, born in 1690 and surviving until 1766. Through James the Hodgson line would carry forward into succeeding generations, eventually intertwining, after long passages of time and ocean, with the broader ancestry gathered into the present family register.

Richard Hodgson stands in the compiler's paternal-grandfather line as a 9× great-grandfather, and represents one of the deeper English roots preserved within the Hyten family archive.