Jacob Hodgen was born January 3, 1793 in Hardin County, Kentucky. He was the son of Robert Hodgen and Sarah Larue. Hodgenville, Kentucky which is located near the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln is named after the Hodgen family.
Jacob married Frances Park Brown, known as Fannie, on November 29, 1818, in Kentucky. They settled in Pittsfield, Illinois, in 1832. Jacob was a wagon marker, farmer and merchant, owning a store on the west side of the Pittsfield Square. He was also a minister of the Christian Church, which began meeting in the Hodgen home at 231 West Adams Street in 1836. Abraham Lincoln visited here in the 1840s and is said to have told Fannie that one of her sons “will make a mark someday.”
That son, Dr. John Hodgen, inspired by local physician Thomas Worthington went on to attend Bethany College in West Virginia then medical school. After graduating he became the assistant resident physician at St Louis City Hospital. He was the demonstrator of anatomy at the University of Missouri. During the Civil War he worked as an army surgeon including the Surgeon General of Missouri. He is credited with inventing a variety of surgical aids, traction devices, splints, double action syringe, stomach pump and his famous Hodgen brace used in setting the large femur bone of the thigh. His father Jacob Hodgen died on April 16, 1858 and is buried here in Oakwood Cemetery.