Alexander (Sandy) Hodgson and family came into this area around 1900 from Finch, Ontario. A son, John (Goldie), was born in 1888 and a daughter, Caroline (Lina).
They settled in Hoquiam near Tacoma, WaShington, for awhile where Goldie and his sister attended school. They moved up into the Trail area where they lived for about seven years and eventually Sandy purchased property on St. Marys River, about three miles from Marysville. Goldie loved the outdoor life and in the early 1920's started prospecting for the Company in the summer months and trapping in the winter. The St. Marys Valley had mink (ermine), martin, and fox and furs were very much in demand.
When Goldie's mother passed away, and the house burned down, his father sold the property to Ben Keer and moved into Marysville, where he owned and operated a grocery store and the post office, in a building that use to stand where the Marysville Motors is now.
In 1921, Virginia Mary MacGregor, a school teacher, born in Fort Langley, but raised in Crawford Bay, came to teach at the Marysville School and Goldie married her in 1923.They built a home on the main street, on the east side of Mark Creek.
They had two children, a son Bud, and a daughter, Jean. One day while the children were in school and Mrs. Hodgson was out in the garden, the house caught fire. With no fire department, it soon burned down. The family lived in the house on the Company farm while a new home was being built.
Goldie was now working steady for the Company on the carpenter gang building dams and trestles at the Concentrator tailings pond.
His sister, Lina, married Con Kervin and they lived only a block away in Marysville.
When Bud and Jean started High School, they had to go to Kimberley. At that time their only transportation was the Star Stages that went through Marysville at seven in the morning. In the summer they used to bicycle the four miles. At least the trip home was an easy down grade all the way.
Goldie always did a lot of hunting and fishing with an eye for mineral out-croppings wherever he travelled. They had a nice garden around their home. One episode, Jean recalls about her father, concerned a bear. The neighborhood was complaining about a bear that was scrounging in everyone's garbage, so Goldie and Jimmy Bidder went looking for it. They couldn't find it. That night Mrs. Hodgson woke up to hear heavy breathing and movement right outside the bedroom window. She woke Goldie, but he passed it off with a, "You must be dreaming", and went back to sleep. In the morning, bear paw tracks were found on the ledge under the bedroom window and all around the house, even on the back porch. He took quite a kidding about that.
Jean attended one year at business college in Calgary before returning to work in the Bank of Montreal. Bud attended University in Vancouver, studying geology and remained there. Goldie passed away in 1963 and Mrs. Hodgson continued to live in the house for a couple of years before she moved to Vancouver, where she still resides.
Jean married Aubrey Lloyd whose story also appears in these pages.
