The Kinship Bridge

A Family Secret Unlocks an Extraordinary Discovery

This journey began with a single moment in 1983, when my great-grandmother Mama Hortie (mother of my mother's Mom) revealed a family secret about my Mom's paternal relatives that would haunt me for forty years:

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"Anderson ain't his real name. He's one of those Hodgsons."

 

For decades, I carried this mystery, knowing only that my great-grandfather Robert Anderson (father of my mother's Dad) wasn't who I thought he was. So I began searching for answers about his parents—simple names to fill the empty branches of our family tree. What I discovered was far more extraordinary than I ever imagined.

 

From Mystery to DNA Discovery

In 2023, armed with modern genealogy tools and DNA testing, I finally had the courage to investigate. Through painstaking research, I traced the truth: my great-great-grandfather was Edward Reginald "ER" Hodgson, an English immigrant who came to America with his parents who were seeking a better life for him and his siblings.  His father died just two years in this new country.  Now the younger Edward took on the mantel of patriarch, moving from New York to Athens, Georgia where he became a successful business man - and a slave owner. Robert Anderson, born in 1861, was the result of Edward's relationship with Phillis, an enslaved woman on his property. This was the painful chapter of history Mama Hortie had tried to tell me about all those years ago.

 

Finding Family Across the Divide

The real miracle happened when I decided to reach out to living Hodgson descendants. Through DNA matches and genealogy websites, I found two remarkable cousins I never knew existed: Tom Hodgson of Athens, Georgia, whose family had preserved ER's photograph and family history for generations. When I sent Tom the image I'd found in my research, he looked up at his office wall to see the same ancestor looking back at him. Mark McKinnon of Breckenridge, Colorado, the well-known political advisor and media personality, who embraced our connection with open arms and genuine excitement about bringing our families together. Mark and I had met before in 2000 during the presidential campaign of George W. Bush, not knowing we were related by blood.

 

The Power of Reconciliation

What began as a search for names became a story of healing. Instead of shame or rejection, I found cousins who welcomed me with warmth and gratitude. Tom, Mark, and I represent the beautiful complexity of America itself—connected by blood, divided by history, and united by our choice to embrace rather than ignore our shared past. Our story proves that when we approach difficult history with courage and grace, we don't just uncover truth—we create the possibility for healing and understanding that seemed impossible just generations ago. This is why The Kinship Bridge exists: to show that the bridges between us are stronger than the walls that divide us, and that family—in all its complicated forms—has the power to heal even our deepest wounds.