Lake County Ohio GenWeb

Anna Churchill Hopkins

The following article is from the Painesville Telegraph, 18December 1879 page 1 and reprinted in Vol. 13, No. 4 pages 3 & 4 of the October 1987 "LakeLines," the newsletter of the Lake County Genealogical Society, retranscribed here by Cathi Salmi.

PIONEER SKETCHES
MRS. ANNA CHURCHILL HOPKINS

Your numerous readers may think I am out of place to be thus placing before the public what strictly belongs to the family circle; but I would say once for all, that in all my interviews with pioneers, if they did not want the hardships which they have been called upon to endure make public, or in other words, printed in the Telegraph, all they had to do was to say so. But I have ever found a readiness to communicate and apparently no objections to its being published in your paper. Thus it was with Mrs. Hopkins, I had not only a very pleasant visit with her and a portion of her family, but very ready to give me the history of the Hopkins family, their losses and the determined efforts of the elder Hopkins and his sons to still make good the losses he had sustained, and more particularly her own husband and his success in business. Mrs. Anna Churchill Hopkins was the daughter of Samuel and Anna McCurty Churchill, and was born in Homer, Cortland county, N.Y., April 9th, 1804. Her parents moved into Auburn in the same county in March, 1819. She says that she lived in Mr. Austin's family in Fairport one year and attended school and obtained a good common school education for those days. She was married in her father's house in Auburn to Mr. Daniel Hopkins, Jan. 9th, 1820. Soon after they began house keeping in their own log house on the farm on which she is living at the present time, and where she has resided sixty years with the exception of the six years they lived on what is today known as Hopkins' Point, on land that has since been washed away by the boisterous waves of Lake Erie. By actual survey H. N. Munson informs me about 80 acres of the original Daniel Hopkins' farm at Hopkins Point was washed away. Mr. Daniel Hopkins died at his home in Mentor May 24th, 1867, aged 77 years. They were the parents of eleven children, all but two of whom are living. Phebe and Charles left five children, Lovina has six, Daniel has three, Wilson has two, and Edward has three, making 19 grandchildren. Mrs. Hopkins is very pleasantly situated to spend the evening of her life. She has a comfortable home with her children and grandchildren in the vicinity and is smart and active for one her age. It can be truly said that Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins have acted well their part in pioneer life. For 62 years he was a resident of what is the county of Lake today. He lived to see the heavy forest fall and the wilderness become fruitful fields. For more than 67 years had Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins walked life's journey together and battled with the stern realities of pioneer life, educated their children, obtained a competence and have been residents of Lake county over 63 years. C. C. B. From The Painesville Telegraph 26 FEB 1880 page 2 In my last communication respecting Mrs. Hopkins, the following was left out by mistake. "She was born in Homer, Cortland county, N. Y. , April 9th, 1804. Her parents moved to Perry in 1816, and in March, 1819, moved to Auburn, Geauga county." C. C.B. [C. C. Bronson] Tallmadge, February 14, 1880