After two hundred years of Methodism in Anguilla, a substantial portion of the main road through the historic Upper Valley has been named after the late Anguillian Minister, Reverend John Hodge, who was born in the 1770s.
Rev Hodge, who has a number of descendants in Anguilla, was the son of a white planter and a coloured woman. He began preaching to the slave population in 1813. He was ordained in 1822, the first coloured West Indian to obtain that distinction in the church. He joined the itinerant ministry and served in a number of islands including Anguilla, St Martin, Tortola and St Kitts. He retired from active ministry in the 1840s and lived in St Martin where he died.
The road-naming ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, when the sign, “Reverend John Hodge Road”, was erected just west of the old Anguillian building. The stretch of road continues from there to the milky thorn tree at the Old Cottage Hospital – and passes the site of the first Methodist Chapel built by Rev Hodge in 1815 with the assistance of slaves. That building eventually became the manse when the Ebenezer Chapel was built by his successor, Rev Henry Britten, in 1830.
It is a belated, but well-deserved, tribute to Rev Hodge for his early work in establishing the Methodist Ministry in Anguilla during slavery. The naming of the section of road after him is seen as a plus to the already historic Upper Valley.
Those who officiated at the ceremony were Mr Sanford Richardson, a long-serving Local Preacher who chaired the event; Mr Kenn Banks, another senior official of the church who gave a history of the early work of Rev Hodge and other related information; Mr Evan Gumbs, Minister of Infrastructure who spoke on behalf of his Ministry and the Anguilla Government; Rev. Dunstan Richardson who gave the benediction and Reverends John A Gumbs and Franklin Roberts both of whom unveiled the new road sign.
