[1][2] His father, Telfair Hodgson, was an Episcopal priest who served as the third vice chancellor of Sewanee: The University of the South from 1879 to 1890.
His mother, nee Frances Potter, was the daughter of a slave-owning planter from Savannah, Georgia.
[2] Hodgson began his career at Brown Bros. & Co., an investment bank in New York City.
[1] He was a registrar of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee and senior warden of the Otey Memorial Parish Church in Sewanee.
[2] With Luke Lea (the publisher of The Tennessean) and David Shepherd, Hodgson became the owner of the Belle Meade Land Company in 1910.