Charles Hopkins

Charles Hopkins, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Charles A. Hopkins

1810-1863

Biographical Sketch

Early Life in New Jersey

Charles A. Hopkins was born in 1810 to Daniel and Ann Simpson Hopkins in Burlington, Burlington County, New Jersey. He was the seventh of ten children. Burlington is on the Delaware River, upstream of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and downstream from Trenton, New Jersey. His forebears had been in Monmouth County, New Jersey for several generations. Monmouth was named after Monmouthshire in Wales. Burlington was a corruption of Bridlington in Yorkshire. The original settlers of Monmouth County were Quakers or immigrants from Yorkshire. Hopkins's biographer opined that his English forebears may have been Quakers. But little is know of Hopkins early life in New Jersey.

In 1833, Hopkins married Ann Steel (c. 1813-1837) in Philadelphia and the following year his first son was born. Around 1837, Anne died in childbirth. The same year, Hopkins became acquainted with the incipient Mormon Church and tax records indicate that he purchased land in Kirtland, Ohio, one of the first Mormon communities. He traveled to Nauvoo, Illinois where he was baptized into the Mormon Church in 1844. In 1846, he married Lydia Okie Van Dyke (1803-1859) in Philadelphia. Between 1840 and 1846, he lived in Indiana and Illinois.

With the Mormon Battalion and onto Utah

He experienced the "Mormon War" of 1844-45 and the expulsion of the Mormons in 1846 from western Illinois to Iowa Territory. In summer of that year, he and other Mormon men were recruited to enlist in the so-called Mormon Battalion. The Battalion was to undertake a historic trek from Iowa to California. Their arrival coincided with the outbreak of the Mexican-American War and they helped secure California for the United States. But Hopkins's journey with the Battalion only took him as far as Fort Pueblo, Colorado. He was among those struck with illness who overwintered in Fort Pueblo. In summer 1847, he was discharged from the Battalion in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He and his companions traveled to the valley of the Great Salt Lake where they met the newly arrived Mormon pioneers. In August, he departed Great Salt Lake valley for Iowa Territory to rejoin his family. They spent two years there before journeying to Great Salt Lake City in 1849 In the Ezra T. Benson wagon company.

With the Southern Exploring Expedition to Southern Utah

Hopkins was part of the Southern Exploring Expedition to southern Utah in 1849-1850. En route, they traveled through Utah Valley including the future site of Lehi where Hopkins would settle for a time. They continued onto southern Utah to explore its possibilities for settlement.

An Original Settler in Lehi in Utah Valley

However, Hopkins did not remain in southern Utah as one of the original "iron missionaries." Instead, in 1850, he returned north to Utah Valley. Hopkins, along with William Riggs, Joel White, White's brothers Samuel and John, and others, settled on an intermittent stream which they named Dry Creek at the northern end of Utah Lake. This rude settlement later was known as Lehi and was recognized as a fertile farming district. It was located 30 miles south of Great Salt Lake City and a mile north of Utah Lake.

Hopkins and the others built the first cabins to form three sides of a fort on Snow Springs. The "fort" enclosed the spring but in the early years there were insufficient settlers to build the cabins along the fourth wall to make an enclosed fort. In spring 1851, they cleared fields and planted crops, Then, to insure a continual supply of water, they spent from May through August building a seven-mile irrigation ditch from the mouth of American Fork canyon to their new settlement. Working at an average rate of a rod (16 1/2') per day, they completed the project just in time to save a portion of their crops. Bishop David Evans selected Hopkins was one of his counselors. In 1852, he entered into polygamy by marrying Mary Ann Edds Skinner (1825-1903) of Devonshire, England, a widow with a son.

In 1853, they held the first municipal election and Hopkins and several others acted as clerks to oversee the results. The same year, the territorial legislature granted Hopkins and his business partners a license to build a toll bridge over the Jordan River crossing. They built the bridge which was a benefit to travelers and a commercial success for its builders. In the same year, Hopkins was elected alderman in Lehi and his wife Mary Ann bore their first child. He retired his community positions at the end of 1853, presumably around the time that he decided to relocate to southern Utah.

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Moving to Cedar City and the Iron Works

For reasons perhaps connected with the intense conflict with the Ute Indians in Utah Valley, the Hopkins decided to move to Cedar City in the southern territory where he joined in the efforts to make a subsistence living while the community also built an ironworks there. After they moved from the original fort to Plat A, Hopkins owned a lot next door to Isaac C. Haight. This was only a temporary location. By 1855, they had laid out Plat B, which was southeast of Plat A and nearer the foothills. Hopkins owned two lots in Plat B. Over the next ten years, Mary Ann bore him four additional children.

In moving to Cedar City, Hopkins had settled in an area dominated by the Deseret Iron Company, known more familiarly as the Ironworks. After iron ore and coal deposits were discovered in the region, Cedar City was founded. In the first years of 1851-52, they investigated whether the region had the necessary raw materials – iron ore, limestone, wood, coal, and waterpower – to support smelting on a large scale. After confirming the presence of the necessary materials and relying heavily on the British Isles immigrants who had worked in iron-related industries in Great Britain, they set to building an iron manufacturing plant. They sited the ironworks at the mouth of Coal Creek near the present location of Cedar City. They mined the coal up canyon and transported it by team and wagon to the furnace located on the stream bank below the mouth of the canyon. The iron ore was transported from nearby Iron Springs by wagon. In 1852, after a small test furnace produced a low quality pig iron, they set about building a full-scale blast furnace.

Progress was impeded, however, in 1853-54 during the Walker War. They shifted their energies from iron making to “forting up” to increase their safety. After a peace treaty was reached with the Ute chief Wakara in 1854, they returned to improving the ironworks. By 1855, they had achieved their greatest success with a sustained run of the furnace producing several tons of pig iron. But most of the runs both before and after failed to achieve a sustained run producing good quality iron. One problem was the fickle nature of Coal Creek, which continued to alternate between flooding and droughts. They determined to develop a more dependable source of power.

In April 1857, the delivery of a new steam engine from Great Salt Lake City seemed to provide the answer. After its arrival, they built a new room to house the engine, connected its boiler to a steady water supply and modified the furnace to accommodate the engine. Many settlers in Cedar City worked long hours in the ironworks. In early June they started an iron run using the steam engine. However, the new machinery created its own set of problems. Through the end of July, they experimented with different configurations of furnace, engine and piping, attempting to optimize the blast furnace. In August, they installed a reservoir to provided filtered water to the steam engine to improve its performance. From late August to early September, shortly before the crisis involving the passing Arkansas emigrant company, they began a new furnace run. But it, too, ended in failure, probably around the time that a dispute arose between some community members and several of those in the passing Arkansas wagon train.

However, other than some small transactions at the company store, the Deseret Iron Company's ledger is silent on Charles Hopkins for this period. It appears that he may have pursued agriculture and livestock raising and left the ironworks to the specialists from the British Isles. At any rate, during this time of intense activity at the ironworks in mid-1857, there is no evidence that Hopkins played a role.

In the Iron Military District: Private Charles Hopkins, Company D, Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion

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In September 1857, Hopkins was a private in a platoon in Captain Joel White's Company D, which was attached to Major Isaac C. Haight's 2nd Battalion in the Iron Military District. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

At age 47, Hopkins was among the more senior militiamen recruited to Mountains Meadows after the initial attack on the wagon train on Monday the 7th. According to John D. Lee, Charles Hopkins was on the Cedar City high council and was among those who arrived at Mountain Meadows with a detachment from Cedar City.

According to Samuel Pollock, Nephi Johnson and John D. Lee, Hopkins was at Mountain Meadows and attended the decisive military council on Thursday the 10th. Lee maintains that as he agonized over the fate of the emigrant train, he and Hopkins consulted together.

Hopkins' exact role in the massacre on Friday, September 11, is unknown. However, as a member of the Cedar City detachment, he probably was in the guard unit that walked beside the emigrant men as they walked northward from the protection of their wagon circle to meet their fate. As the massacre commenced, the duty of the guards was to wheel and fire on the emigrant men, quickly dispatching them. Yet during the actual massacre, reactions varied among the guards. Some shrank from their duty, others fired over the heads of their victims, while others still undertook their bloody duty with zeal. Within minutes, members of the Cedar City unit had killed all but three of the emigrant men. However, whether Hopkins was in this guard unit and if so, how he acted during the massacre will probably never be known with any certainty.

Back in Cedar City, Charles Hopkins and one of his wives took in one of the surviving children from the massacre. They cared for the child until U.S. Indian Superintendent Jacob Forney retrieved the surviving children in spring 1857 and returned them to Arkansas.

Moving North to Beaver County

In 1859, Hopkins was listed in the arrest warrant that Judge John Cradlebaugh had issued. Spurred by the threat of arrest as well as the collapse of the iron-based economy in Cedar City, Hopkins and his family departed Cedar City. In the same year, his second wife Lydia Hopkins died. With his remaining wife Mary Ann and family, Hopkins headed north to Beaver.

Relocating to Millard County

After several years, the Hopkins and two other families moved farther north to found Petersburg (Kanosh), in Millard County. Later they moved to Hatton, Millard County, where they settled and he began homesteading. One account states that in 1863, Hopkins would cut posts by day, then clear his land and install fencing by night. Perhaps because of the combined effects of overwork and exposure, Hopkins took sick and died in October of that year, leaving five children under ten years of age. He was buried in Fillmore, Millard County.

Charles Hopkins did not live to see the 1870s when the growing interest and controversy surrounding the massacre led to the trial, conviction and execution of his fellow militiaman John D. Lee. However, Lee mentioned Hopkins by name in his account of the massacre in Lee's Mormonism Unveiled.

No photographs of Charles Hopkins have yet been found. Any photographs or additional information on Hopkins would be greatly appreciated.

References

Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 133, 158, 178; Bennion, Charles Hopkins 1810-1863, [etc.] ; Bigler and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 70 fn. 14, 235, 324, 345, 396; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 82, 161, 179, 193; Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 11:409; Day, MIlestones of Millard, 340 (bio); Fleek, History May be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion; Gardner, History of Lehi, 17, 22, 23, 35, 51, 53, 55. 124 (sic), 238, 239; Huff, Utah County Centennial History, 234, 239, 247, 256; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Church, 424; Lee Trials transcripts; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 230, 232, 233, 234, 247, 379; Lyman, A History of Millard County, 37, 99; Membership Records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, 1830-1848; New.FamilySearch.org; Shirts and Shirts, A Trial Furnace, 10, 62 fn. 66, 331, 476-77, 488, 494; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 223, 248, 254; Tyler, A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion [etc.]; Van Wagoner, Lehi: Portraits of a Utah Town, 2, 3, 4, 41, 90, 383, 400, 409; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 167, 173, 187, 219, Appendix C, 258; Young, “The Spirit of the Pioneers,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 14/1-4 (1946), 16.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

For a biography of Charles Hopkins by an admiring descendant, see:

• http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/FH30&CISOPTR=22350&CISOSHOW=22349

For further information on Charles Hopkins, see:

• http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
• Deseret Iron Company Account Book, 1854-1867: http://www.footnote.com/document/241905844/

Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.