MISSIONARY TO THE SELEKA-ROLONG AND THE GRIQUAS 1821-1831.

Foreword

As a missionary of the Methodist Missionary Society, Thomas Laidman Hodgson played the leading part in establishing the first Christian missions beyond the Vaal River, within the borders of the later Transvaal. While the first missionaries among certain of the Tswana people were members of the London Missionary Society, notably James Read, who founded the Kuruman mission in 1816 and Robert Moffat, who made it famous, it was the Methodists, Hodgson and his companion Samuel Broadbent, who were the pioneer missionaries with other Tswana groups in territory further east. Broadbent enjoys the distinction of being the father of Lewis Broadbent, the first white man known to have been born in the Transvaal  (in 1823), but it was Hodgson who was to spend the longer period with the Tswana group concerned, The Seleka-Rolong under chief Sehunelo, First at Matlwase (or Maquassi, though the mission site is nearer Wolmaanstad than the present railway siding of Makwassie) with Broadbent in 1823-1824, then with James Archbell, again at Matlwase in 1825, and at Platberg (near the present Warrenton) from 1826 to 1828, Hodgson, in times of trouble and setback as well as achievement, experienced an association of some four years with the Seleka-Rolong. It is fitting that it should have been he who wrote the Journals which provide the fullest and most immediate record of this mission and fortunate that his manuscript has survived. From 1828 to 1830  Hodgson served at the Griqua mission at Boetsap and subsequently he became general superintendent of the Methodist Church at the Cape. He died in Cape Town in 1850.

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