The Dictionary of Virginia Biography is published online through a partnership with Encyclopedia Virginia. Biographies that do not also appear in the three print volumes (surnames Aaroe�Daniels) link to lists of sources consulted.
Sources consulted for the biography of:Willis Augustus Hodges (1815–1890)
Biographical Information
- Family information, including copies and transcriptions, in Nelson-Hodges Papers (1773–1936), Genealogical Vertical Files, Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Register of Free Negroes and Mulattoe's [sic] in the County of Princess Anne, (according to Law), 1830–1862, entry no. 372.
- Princess Anne Co. Minute Book 34:220.
- References in Records of the Field Offices for the State of Virginia (1865–1872), Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, M1913, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., including George White to D. H. Remington, August 7, 1867 (Roll 138), Remington to Willis A. Hodges, August 5, 1867 (Roll 137), January 27, 1868 (Roll 135), Willis A. Hodges to Remington, August 5, 1867 (Roll 137), and Hodges's April 1866 testimony in Julia Hodges v. James Bonney, enclosed in Thomas P. Jackson to A. S. Flagg Apr. 10, 1866, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Virginia (1865–1872), Norfolk Subdivision, Letters Received, March–June 1866 (Roll 141).
- Published Biographies:
- Willard B. Gatewood Jr., ed., Free Man of Color: The Autobiography of Willis Augustus Hodges (1982), with frontispiece portrait and self-reported birth date on 4, 5.
- Richard Lowe, "Willis Augustus Hodges, 'We Are Now Coming to New Things,'" in The Human Tradition in the Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. Steven E. Woodworth (2000), 213–223.
- Brief biography in Luther Porter Jackson, Negro Office-Holders in Virginia, 1865–1895 (1945), 21.
Political Activity
- Signature on December 14, 1841, petition to House of Representatives, Records of the U. S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233, HR27A-H1.6, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
- Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia [1868].
- Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia (1868), first quotation on 639, second quotation on 673.
- Richard G. Lowe, "Virginia's Reconstruction Convention: General Schofield Rates the Delegates," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 80 (1972): 353, incorrectly identifying Hodges as illiterate.
- Richard L. Hume, "The Membership of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1867–1868: A Study of the Beginnings of Congressional Reconstruction in the Upper South," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 86 (1978): 482.
- Secretary of the Commonwealth, Election Records, 1776–1941, State Government Records Collection, Record Group 13, Library of Virginia, Election Record No. 427 (1867 election), Election Record No. 3 (1871 election), Election Record No. 29 (1875 election), and Election Record No. 13 (1877).
- 1869 election return in General Orders and Circulars, Headquarters First Military District, 1869 (1870), "Summary of the result of the election for members of the State Senate of Virginia, held on the 6th day of July, 1869," 10.
Newspapers
- I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors (1891), 61–65.
- Political activity reported in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 25, 1846; September 29, 1858; January 5, 1860; August 11, 1864.
- Caricature portrait in Richmond Southern Opinion, December 21, 1867.
- Convention engraving in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper 25 (February 15, 1868): 345.
Obituaries
- Obituary with death date in Boston Herald, September 26, 1890.
- Obituary with death date in New York Sun, September 26, 1890.
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