Charles Hopkins
Charles Hopkins, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Charles A. Hopkins 1810-1863
Biographical Sketch
Charles A. Hopkins was born in 1810 in Burlington, Burlington County, New Jersey. 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. 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, he 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 was probably baptized that year. In 1840, he married Lydia Okie Van Dyke (1803-1859) in Philadelphia. Between 1840 and 1846, he lived in Indiana and Illinois.
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 into the so-called Mormon Battalion. The Battalion was to undertake a historic trek from Iowa to California where their arrival coincided with the outbreak of the Mexican-American War. The Battalion was to assist General Stephen Kearny in the occupation of Alta California which secured it for the United States. However, Hopkins's journey with the Battalion only took him to 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 Salt Lake valley for Iowa Territory to rejoin his family. They spent two years there before journeying to the valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1849.
Hopkins was part of the Southern Exploring Expedition to southern Utah in 1849-1850. However, he did not remain there as one of the original "iron missionaries." Instead, in 1851, he settled in Lehi where he helped build an irrigation ditch from the nearly canyon to the new settlement. In 1852, he entered into polygamy by marrying Mary Ann Edds Skinner (1825-1903), a widow with a son from Devonshire, England. Over the next ten years she bore him five children. In 1855, the Hopkins family settled in Cedar City in the southern territory.
Private Charles Hopkins, Company D, Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion
In September 1857, Hopkins was a private in the Iron Military District. But at age 47, he 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 company 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. His exact role in the massacre the following day is unknown. Back in Cedar City, he and his wife took in one of the surviving children from the massacre.
Subsequent Life
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, he and his family with two other families moved north to found Petersburg (Kanosh), in Millard County. Later they moved to Hatton, Millard County, where he died in 1863. He was buried in Fillmore, Millard County. Charles Hopkins did not live to 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.
No photographs of Charles Hopkins have yet been found. Any photographs or additional information on Hopkins would be greatly appreciated.
References
Marjorie Hopkins Bennion, Charles Hopkins 1810-1863, Pioneer, Soldier, Explorer, & Leader (Provo, Utah: Hopkins Family History Association, 2006), ; Kate Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 11:409; Fleek, History May be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion; Lee Trials transcripts; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Edward Leo Lyman, A History of Millard County, 37, 99; Membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, 1830-1848; New.familysearch.org; Morris Shirts, A Trial Furnace, 10; Tyler, A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War: 1846-1848; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C; Young, “The Spirit of the Pioneers,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 14/1-4 (1946), 16.
External Links
A biography of Charles Hopkins by an admiring descendant is here: http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/FH30&CISOPTR=22350&CISOSHOW=22349
Further information and confirmation needed. Please comment or contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com. Thank you!
