"The Life and Travels in the Ministry of the Gospel of John Pemberton"

William Hodgson Jr. (1804-1878) was born May 24th, 1804 in Sheffield, England, the son of William (Sr.) and Mary Fairbank Hodgson. William (Sr.) had been a Unitarian clergyman who was convinced by the ministry of Thomas Scattergood and joined Friends. In 1827, William Hodgson Jr. came to Philadelphia and engaged in the drug business with Daniel B. Smith. He married Elizabeth Richardson in 1835, and the couple had one daughter, Mary Richardson Hodgson, born April 30th, 1836. In 1860, with about 100 other Quaker families, Hodgson separated from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and established the “General Meeting of Friends for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

Hodgson published a number of pieces related to the Society of Friends, including; “Select Historical Memoirs of the Religious Society of Friends” (1844), “An Examination of the memoirs and writings of Joseph John Gurney” (1856), “A brief account of the sorrowful lapse from the first principles in the Religious Society of Friends” (1862), and the two volume work, “The Society of Friends in the Nineteenth Century” (1875).

Hodgson died in 1878 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at about 74 years old.

Source: Dictionary of Quaker Biography