Adrian Hodge

Adrian Hodge, third of the four children of Jennie Edith Martin and Jacob Sylvester Hodge, was born 18 February 1876 in Delavan, Fairbault County, MN, not long after his parents had moved away from Winslow, Stephenson County, IL. He experienced a very short life, passing away 4 May 1876 in Delavan at approximately eleven weeks of age. He died of scarlet fever. Because he dwelled on Earth so short a time, his middle name has been lost. After the death of his father in 1900, the only known source of the information was the family Bible, but that was lost when the San Francisco, CA home of his sister Agnes Leona Hodge Wood was consumed in the city-wide fire triggered by the great earthquake of 1906.

Adrian’s death deeply affected his mother and may have contributed to the mental collapse that caused her to be institutionalized at the end of the 1870s. Jennie is known to have drawn an outline of his tiny hand by placing it on a piece of paper shortly after his demise, so that she could have some memento of him. That drawing was also lost in the San Francisco fire.