Source: Doyle Clinton Akers. 1992. The Hopkins/Coger
Connection: including efforts in the 1920s to redistribute the estate of
railroad builder Mark Hopkins. Self-published, Denison, TX. 87
pp (LDS Call No. 929.273 H774; LDS Film No. 1750757, Item 10). Abstract
from the LDS online catalog:
| Mark Hopkins (1813-1878), one of the builders of the first
transcontinental railroad, was born at Henderson, New York, the
son of
Edward (Ned) Hopkins and Hannah
Crow Chambers. His family moved
in 1825 to St. Clair, Michigan. Elizabeth Susan Hopkins (1832 - 1923),
daughter of Caleb Hopkins and Mary Ann Cocke, was born in Gochland, Va.,
and died in Berryville, Arkansas. She married Asa C. Coger (1829-1880),
son of John Coger and Sarah Jane Sands, in 1815. He was born in Huntsville,
Arkansas. After the Civil War Asa moved his family to Oskaloosa,
Kansas, and about 1872 to Huntsville, Arkansas where he ran a drug store.
The earliest known ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, is said to have arrived
in America in Nov. 1620 aboard the Mayflower. |
|
| The amazing thing about this connection is that it's so easily disproved.
I haven't seen the original booklet, only the above abstract from the LDS
catalog, but if the rest of the genealogy in this book is this bad, you
have to consider everything in it suspect.
Mark HOPKINS was, indeed, born at Henderson, NY, and his parents did
move to St. Clair, MI, but his parents were Mark HOPKINS & Anastasia
KELLOGG of Great Barrington, MA, then Henderson, NY, then St. Clair, MI
— not Edward HOPKINS & Hannah CROW of Virginia, then North Carolina.
The evidence contradicting Edward's connection to Mark is given in the
sources on:
Family
Group Sheet of Edward HOPKINS & Hannah CROW
In a nutshell, Edward was born 1781/2 in Virginia and is in the 1830,
1840 and 1850 censuses of Randolph Co., NC. In other words, Edward
HOPKINS was nowhere near New York or Michigan, while Mark HOPKINS, railroad
baron, was unquestionable born in NY.
Of course, even if the above family were connected to Mark HOPKINS,
they still wouldn't be connected to Stephen HOPKINS, Mayflower Passenger,
because the supposed connection between Mark HOPKINS's ancestor, John HOPKINS
of Cambridge, 1634, and Stephen HOPKINS, Mayflower Passenger, is
also bogus (see False
and Faked Mayflower Genealogy at Caleb Johnson's web site).
HOPKINS is a common English surname, and any connection between "southern"
HOPKINS'es and New England ones is remote in the extreme. |
