Sacramento County
Biographies
AUGUSTUS STEPHEN HOPKINS
A. S. HOPKINS, senior member of the
firm of Hopkins & Bro., dealers in wood and willow ware, 311-313
J street, Sacramento,
is a veritable son of New England, possessed of all the
versatility, energy and pluck so characteristic of new England people. He
was born March 21, 1837, at Cambridge, Vermont;
his father, S. F. Hopkins, was a merchant; his mother’s maiden name was Harriet
Austin. The family is clearly of Welsh origin, and the direct line of
ancestry can be traced back to the Mayflower. Stephen Hopkins was one of
the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The subject of this notice
was educated at Georgia, Franklin County, Vermont. At the age of sixteen
years he began teaching school, in his native town, and later at Grand
Isle. In 1854 he emigrated to Crete,
Illinois, a few miles south of Chicago,
and taught school there four years. Thence he went to Blackjack and
Cottonwood, Kansas, and was on hand to participate in the Kansas troubles in
1856-‘57, between the settlers and the border ruffians. Returning to Vermont,
he was employed in a bookstore at Burlington, and in 1861
enlisted from Burlington as a private in the First Vermont
Infantry, going out with the three-months men, to Newport
News. He participated in the disastrous battle of
Big Bethel, and at the expiration of his term of enlistment was honorably
discharged and returned to his home in Vermont. In
1862, when twenty-five years old, still unmarried and unsettled in life, he
determined once more to strike out for the far West,
and came to the Golden State. Embarking on the steamer Ariel, he came by
way of the Isthmus, arriving in San Francisco
June 30, 1862. His first enterprise was the management of a dairy ranch
which he owned in Marion County. This
he sold in 1863, and he went to the Forest
City mining district and engaged in
dairying, saw-milling and mining. After a time he quit all these and
resumed school-teaching, first in Solano County and afterward in Bloomfield,
Sonoma County. In 1865 he became a member of the Maine Prairie Rifles in
Solano, and was First Lieutenant of that organization. Was justice of the
peace in 1866-‘67. February 4, 1868, he came to Sacramento
and started a news office and bookstore, and continued in this line for ten
years; then, in 1878, he sold out to W. A. and C. S. Houghton, who continued
the business. Soon afterward he engaged in the wood and willow ware trade,
in company with U. C. Billingsby. In 1886 his
brother, E. C., succeeded Mr. Billingsby. Mr.
Hopkins entered public life in 1876, as county supervisor for the unexpired
term of J. A. Mason. Was a school trustee until
1888, and a director of the Free Library for five years. Is a member of
Eureka Lodge, No. 4, I. O. O. F.; a past president of the Society of Veteran
Odd Fellows; a member of Sumner Post, No. 3, G. A. R.; of Sacramento Lodge, No.
80, A. O. U. W.; of Unity Lodge, No. 2088, K. of H.; was president of the first
Immigration Society, which was organized in 1878, and two years afterward was
merged into the Central and Northern, and of which he was president for two
years; was also, in 1886, one of the founders and has been a director up to
this time, of the Sacramento Improvement Association; and also was one of the
original members and directors of the Sacramento Board of Trade, and since then
chosen to the same position. Mr. Hopkins was married April 17, 1868, to
Miss Harriet Hewes, daughter of Jonathan Hewes, of Vermont,
and a descendant of Cyrus Hewes, who also was a
signer of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins have three
children: Stephen I., Grace E. and William. Such, in brief, is the outline
of the busy life of one of New England’s sons.
Transcribed 8-30-07
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated
History of Sacramento County, California. Pages 622-623.
Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Marilyn R. Pankey.