Thomas Hodson was a Wesleyan Missionary, who served in India, in the Wesleyan Canarese Mission, at the Bangalore Petah and Gubbi. Thomas helped in running the first Wesleyan Mission Canarese school in the erstwhile Mysore State. Thomas was a linguist and a Kannada scholar, and was also fluent in Tamil and Bengali. Hodson helped in establishing the Wesleyan Canarese Chapel (now the Hudson Memorial Church) at Nagrathpet in the Bangalore Petah. In 1864, Hodson wrote An Elementary Grammar of the Kannada, or Canarese Language, a treatise on the grammar of the Kannada language.