PUBLICATIONS OF THE ROCHESTER 
 HISTORICAL SOCIETY, No. II. 
 
 SKETCH 
 
 THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 4 
 
 . OF 
 
 SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS, 
 
 ; ' ^ <jF 
 
 SALEM, CONNECTICUT. 
 
THE 
 
 John Spencer Bassett Collection 
 
 Established in 1928 
 
 BY 
 
 MEMBERS OF THE 9019 
 AND OTHERS 
 
 This Volume Received From 
 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
PUBL1CA TIONS OF THE ROCHESTER 
 HISTORICAL SOCIETY: No. II. 
 
 . \ \ I f { 
 
 SKETCH 
 
 THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS,'^'- 
 
 OF SALEM, CONNECTICUT, 
 
 WRITTEN BY HIMSELF, AND LEFT AS A TOKEN OF 
 AFFECTION TO HIS CHILDREN. 
 
 Together with Reminiscences by his Children, and 
 a Genealogy of the Hopkins Family. 
 
 150522 
 
 ROCHESTER, N. Y. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY, 
 1898. 
 
E. R. ANDREWS, PRINTER, AQUEDUCT ST., ROCHESTER, N. Y. 
 
\ V 
 
 
 
 *-j 0 h • 7 ^ 
 
 R fc 7 6 p 
 
 PEEFATOEY NOTE. 
 
 At the annual meeting of the Rochester Historical Society on the evening of 
 March 14th, 1898, the President, Mr. George M. Elwood, being in the Chair, 
 Dr. Augustus Hopkins Strong read to the Society extracts from the manuscript 
 autobiography of his grand-uncle, the Hon. Samuel Miles Hopkins, LL.D. 
 As an introduction to his reading, Dr. Strong made the following remarks:— 
 
 “In the archives of the family of which I am an unworthy representative, 
 there has been for the last fifty years a little manuscript book which was writ¬ 
 ten just sixty-six years ago. It is a treasure which has never been made public, 
 and, so far as I am aware, it has never until this evening been read outside of 
 the family to which it belongs. It is a sketch of the public and private life of 
 Samuel Miles Hopkins, of Salem, Connecticut, written by himself and left as 
 a token of affection to his children. I propose to read to you this evening 
 some portions of this little autobiography. Before beginning my reading how¬ 
 ever, let me connect it with the proper work of this Historical Society, by say¬ 
 ing that the author of the sketch, who was born in 1772 and died in 1837, and 
 who received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Yale College in 1832, was in 
 his later life a man of note in Western New York. He was the founder of the 
 village of Moscow in Livingston County, was a resident successively of Mount 
 Morris and of Geneva, and among other offices held those of State Senator and 
 Member of Congress. 
 
 “I take particular interest in the narrative because he was a grand-uncle of 
 mine. There are others here however who are more directly related than I, 
 and are in the direct line of descent from him. I refer to Mr. John H. Hop¬ 
 kins, and to Mrs. J. P. Varnum, his grandchildren. The fact that the autobiog¬ 
 raphy is addressed to his children, and was never written for publication, lends 
 a tender interest to many parts of it, for it is the frank unfolding of an affec¬ 
 tionate, highly cultivated, and naturally noble mind. It is the life story of a 
 man of unusual endowments, whose lot was cast in stirring times, and who 
 made his mark upon his generation. The account of his education, his early 
 connection with Chancellor Kent and Aaron Burr, his experiences in England 
 and in France at the time when the first Napoleon w'as rising to power, his 
 adventures in the untrodden American wilderness, his misfortunes and suc¬ 
 cesses, his religious faith and devotion, is too graphic and interesting to be lost. 
 
 150322 
 
IV 
 
 ROCHESTER HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 It contains valuable material for our early history, and for that reason I have 
 thought it a quite appropriate theme to occupy our time for this session of the 
 Rochester Historical Society.” 
 
 Before proceeding to read from the autobiography, Dr. Strong made some 
 allusion to the ancestry of Samuel Miles Hopkins, and to the distinguished 
 men who have borne the Hopkins name, among them Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, 
 the poet, of Hartford, Conn., who exerted no small influence as a writer of 
 political and satirical verses diuing our Revolution; Stephen Hopkins, one of 
 the signers of the Declaration of Independence; Dr. Samuel Hopkins, of New¬ 
 port, R. I., the great New England theologian, whose sermons stirred up the 
 first organized political action against slavery in America; Esek Hopkins, the 
 first Commodore of the American Navy; President Mark Hopkins, of Williams 
 College, one of the noblest teachers of young men and one of the most influ¬ 
 ential writers on ethical science that this country has produced; and Professor 
 Samuel M. Hopkins, D. D., the son of the author of our sketch, and for many 
 years Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Auburn Theological Seminary. 
 Further information in regard to the Hopkins Family has been embodied in 
 the Genealogy which follows this Sketch. 
 
 At the conclusion of Dr. Strong’s reading, Theodore Bacon, Esq., displayed 
 a book published in 1826. It was entitled “Reports of Cases Argued and 
 Determined in the Court of Chancery of the State of New York, volume I., by 
 Samuel M. Hopkins, Counsellor-at-Law. ” Chancellor Sanford, Mr. Bacon said, 
 appointed Mr. Hopkins as Reporter in his Court. The decisions of the Court 
 were published in one volume, and this volume in point of accuracy is exceeded 
 by few in the English language. Mr. Charles E. Fitch mentioned a Fourth of 
 July Oration which was delivered by Mr. Hopkins in Syracuse in the year 1820. 
 Continuing, Mr. Fitch expressed his judgment that the document which had 
 been read by Dr. Strong was far too valuable for purposes of history to be kept 
 from the public. The result was the appointment of a Committee consisting of 
 Dr. Strong, Charles E. Fitch, and George P. Humphrey, to confer with the 
 family in regard to the publication of the manuscript. The assent of the family 
 having been obtained, the autobiography itself is now published by the Roch¬ 
 ester Historical Society. 
 
SKETCH 
 
 OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 To my Children : 
 
 For some years past, I have intended to leave behind me, for your 
 perusal, a short account of the more important events of my life. 
 That life, indeed, has not been conspicuous, nor to my fellowmen of 
 much importance. On the contrary, it has been, most generally, a 
 scene of disappointment, leading to results very different from the 
 sanguine hopes of early years. But it has also been a scene of bless¬ 
 ings and mercies; and my estimate of the value of life itself is much 
 more favorable than that of moralists in general. My principal 
 motives, however, for leaving any memorial of a life of so little 
 general interest, are, that it will be a token of the dear love I bear 
 you; that it may incidentally afford lessons, or warnings; that it 
 may possibly (though I am not sure that I shall write enough at 
 large for that) afford me the opportunity to note some thoughts 
 which may interest you ; and finally that I think some sketch of my 
 early recollections may transmit to you who are to follow, such 
 views of society, manners and things, as one generation may be glad 
 to receive from those who went before. I will also add a few' mem¬ 
 oranda concerning our family and ancestors. 
 
 Hitherto I have obtained no certain knowledge of my progenitors, 
 farther back than four generations previous to myself, that is to my 
 great grandfather. His baptismal name is not known to me, but 
 according to some memoranda which my father sent me, he removed 
 from Hartford, in Connecticut, to Waterbury, which must have been 
 towards the year 1700. The family-tree which I intend to annex 
 will show our direct line, and such other of his descendants as are 
 known to me. 
 
9 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 In the Massachusetts Historical Collections, vol. 8, p. 207, is an 
 account of the first settlement at Plymouth, from which it appears 
 that on hoard the first ship was a person of the name of Stephen 
 Hopkins, who was of some consideration. Stephen has been a 
 hereditary name among us. Hr. Daniel Hopkins of Salem, Mass., 
 wrote me that he had no doubt but that Stephen was our common 
 ancestor. His brother Samuel of Newport (in writing his own life, 
 I believe) made a remark to this effect, that, so far as he could learn, 
 lie descended from a stock who were Puritans as far back as Queen 
 Elizabeth. I now add that, as far back as I learn, they have been 
 very universally honest men. I think it is very common that bless¬ 
 ings descend through a long train of the descendants of pious parents. 
 
 My grandfather removed from old Waterbury to the parish or 
 “ society ” of Salem (part of that town), which must have been about 
 1730. I believe the family were large original proprietors in the 
 town. He, my grandfather, and father, lived at the old family place 
 until my father’s removal to Goshen in 1774. My father’s mother 
 was of the Tallmadge family of Long Island (from which place was 
 Col. E. Tallmadge of Litchfield, a cavalry officer in the Revolution¬ 
 ary War). My mother’s name was Miles. My grandfather married, 
 as his third wife, the widow Ann Miles of Wallingford (her family 
 name was Daily), who had several children. They all removed to 
 Salem and made one family, with my grandfather; both families 
 lived in great and uninterrupted friendship during their lives. 
 My mother was the daughter of this third wife of my grandfather. 
 This grandmother Miles, who lived till my age of about 18 or 19, 
 was a woman of uncommon mind and information ; well versed in 
 many things which our country women of that age did not generally 
 study,—such as Geography, etc. She was a reader of Josephus and 
 of Ancient History, and brought to my grandfather, among other 
 books, the works of Milton, Young, Rowe, and, I believe, of Pope. I 
 remember the Turkish Spy and several others. These added variety 
 to the collection of strict Calvinistic theology and Puritanical ser¬ 
 mons, which were at the old Hopkins residence, and they inspired a 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 3 
 
 strong love of reading in the whole family. My father once drew 
 up for my use some notices regarding our families, but he was so 
 much engaged at the time that he did not ever revise them. It was 
 soon after the death of my uncle, Dr. Samuel Hopkins, hereafter 
 mentioned. Thinking what he wrote rather too hasty for presenta¬ 
 tion as a whole, I now extract the following remarks from it. 
 
 My grandfather died in 1790. He was a grave, thoughtful, 
 observing man, of rather a melancholy character, which perhaps 
 might be increased by his religious views; for in religion he was 
 almost of the strictest sect of the Puritans, whose excellencies and 
 defects he at once exemplified. His habit of close and careful obser¬ 
 vation, both upon moral and physical objects, and self-acquired way 
 of reasoning upon them, made him in many respects a wise man. 
 But he was rather diffident of himself, and stated his opinions and 
 conclusions with much caution. His reading was chiefly that of the 
 practical religion of the seventeenth century. I believe his personal 
 attention to religion was excited by the preaching of Wliitefield. In 
 person, he was tall and spare, and in health rather delicate, and became 
 accustomed to regulate his diet and clothing with much care. Yet 
 he lived to 75, and then died of accidental small-pox. His second 
 son, Samuel, was in many respects one of the most extraordinary 
 men I ever knew, yet he has left nothing behind him which will at 
 all do him justice. He will live a little longer in the love and admi¬ 
 ration of all the good and wise of his acquaintance who survive, and 
 then the memory of him will be lost to all human view, like that of 
 the vast multitude of men to whom God has given extraordinary 
 powers, and who shine awhile and then are extinguished for ever. 
 I should shrink from any attempt to write his character; but will 
 try to throw in a few detached remarks to give some idea of him. 
 The portrait of him which you see in the drawing-room is a copy by 
 Trumbull, taken about 1825, from a portrait in possession of James 
 Watson, which original Trumbull had taken for Watson as early as 
 1794. If the family of Mr. Watson ever sell that original, it ought 
 to be obtained, first, by Hopkins McCracken, the only living descend- 
 
4 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 ant of my uncle, and in default of him by some of you. You will 
 see in the portrait a head and face, which I think is hardly excelled 
 by the superlative beauty of Milton’s. The intense glare of that eye, 
 which you observe in the portrait, was the true interpreter of a mind 
 immersed in intense thought. The whole cast of his mind and there¬ 
 fore of his conversation was in the highest degree bold, strong, ori«- 
 inal; and his thoughts were very often uttered in nervous and 
 concise figures of speech, entirely peculiar to himself and full of 
 instruction and light. The habits of society had not then reached 
 that discipline and pretended polish, which at this day would sup¬ 
 press or much limit that style. But I think that his peculiar faculty 
 was the intuitive and almost instantaneous perception of truth. 
 Anecdotes of his extraordinary sagacity are still repeated with admi¬ 
 ration among his surviving friends and by patients, some of whom, 
 now nearly thirty years after his death, still delight to tell how he 
 saved their lives, and that by means most extraordinary. While I 
 write this, I have in mind, as an example which you know, that of a 
 venerable lady who was subject to bleeding from the lungs. She 
 had been under the care of a physician, who according to all known 
 good practice had stopped the hemorrhage, and supposed, as all oth¬ 
 ers did, that he had saved her life. But as she continued very ill, 
 my uncle, who intimately knew her constitution, was sent for. His 
 first measure was to set the lungs bleeding again, and she is yet alive. 
 I presume the world never saw bolder practice; and woe to the phy¬ 
 sician who, with less sagacity than his, shall dare to imitate it. He 
 was called too in the night (sleeping soundly from fatigue and 
 
 exhaustion) to rise and visit his particular friend, Dr. B-, who 
 
 was said “ to be dying with the colic.” “ He hasn’t got the colic,” 
 said he, half asleep and half awake, while dressing. When he 
 arrived the patient was already surrounded by other physicians, who 
 stood aghast but presumed not to murmur as they saw him begin to 
 ply the sufferer with tremendous stimulants, internal and external. 
 It was a repelled or wandering rheumatism, and any treatment for 
 colic would have killed the man. All this he had foreseen and 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 5 
 
 understood before the attendants could believe that he was awake. 
 When the stricture was removed from the bowels to a limb, he 
 reproached his friend, Dr. B.: “Did I not tell you that that wander¬ 
 ing rheumatism would kill you, unless you took care of yourself V y 
 The cooling treatment in fevers, the puerperal especially; and wine 
 in fevers since called typhus, 1 believe, were then thought madness; 
 but his patients got well. Some such cases were the subject of much 
 newspaper discussion. 
 
 The intuitive discernment of truth was not confined to professional 
 matters. I remember instances which related to subjects very for¬ 
 eign to his usual studies; one even in relation to the operation of 
 the judicial’}' in the Constitution of the United States, lately adopted. 
 His writings were almost always occasional, and generally humorous 
 and satirical. On a review of them, they seem to lose so much of 
 their force and point by the change of times and things, that I 
 scarcely think they ought in justice to him to be published, lie 
 removed from Litchfield to Hartford about 1784. Soon after this, 
 and until 1789, the attention of all intelligent and good men became 
 deeply engrossed by the great question of an efficient Federal Union. 
 The timid, the less informed and jealous, were fearful of delegating 
 great powers which might, they feared, be used against public liberty. 
 But more than all this was the rivalry of little great men and second- 
 rate politicians, who foresaw that their petty importance would be 
 obscured by the power of real talent, which must be brought into 
 action to support the general government. To bring the mass of 
 the people to right views and decided action on this point required a 
 power of persuasion and instruction and a mass of talent, such as, I 
 presume, was never before nor since exerted before any people. 
 
 At that time there resided in Hartford, John Trumbull, author of 
 McFingal; Col. David Humphries, Oliver Wolcott, Joel Barlow and 
 my uncle; and a few years later Theodore Dwight, Richard Alsop 
 and others. The first set of these made an informal club, meeting 
 often, and by joint effort furnishing something in every possible 
 style of writing, calculated to convince and pursuade a reading and 
 
6 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 thinking people; but much of all this was conveyed in the form of 
 tale, fable, mock heroics and irony; and much that is now lost forever, 
 was I conceive, in a spirit of humor and good sense, not inferior to 
 that of the age of Swift and Arbuthnot. I remember a plan for a 
 legislative body, to be composed of old women only. Then they got 
 up a heroic poem, called the Anarchiad, supposed to have been dis¬ 
 covered among the ancient works at Marietta and more ancient than 
 Homer, from which he and all subsequent poets had borrowed 
 unblushingly. The plot of the poem was the final reduction of 
 human institutions and all else to their original chaos. The leading 
 demagogues of the day were made to figure as the agents and gen¬ 
 erals of the grand march; and the speeches and scenes of the ancient 
 poets, but above all, of Milton’s infernal legion and nether world, 
 were parodied and travestied with inexpressible gravity, always 
 noting the flagrant plagiarisms of Homer, Virgil, Milton & Company. 
 I remember the plan of some games instituted by the Anarch, in 
 which the first prize was awarded to the chief who could see the 
 farthest into total darkness, and in which all the leading popular 
 factionists of the day were made to contend. But it was not humor 
 alone. Ancient History was ransacked and contributed its share, 
 and all the resources of reason were called forth, aided by a spirit of 
 the deepest feeling for the unparalleled interests then at stake. 
 Talent and the love of country, and a feeling of deep concern for 
 the good of mankind, in that instance presided. Oh! that it might 
 ever be so. 
 
 I have been thus particular on this subject because it will disclose 
 to you a fact which history—false, superficial, partisan, vulgar—will 
 never tell to posterity. It is indeed sometimes told that the war of 
 the Revolution was not to repel oppression felt, but foreseen. But 
 the Federal Constitution was a much greater effort of just discern¬ 
 ment in a whole people; and it required a much greater sacrifice of 
 old habits, of local interests, fears and jealousies, and a much wiser 
 foresight of impending dangers. This was mainly accomplished by 
 the pens of that vast corps of very able men scattered throughout 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 7 
 
 the country, and which that age produced so fruitfully. But what 
 idea does it give of the American people as they were fifty years 
 ago! This, however, is what history will never explain, because the 
 writers will never know it. 
 
 I add but a word more of my uncle. He was kind, humane, most 
 sincerely disinterested, so that he laid up but little property from a 
 practice so immense that cases were sent to him in writing, for con¬ 
 sultation, from distant states. His devotion to his patients was 
 unbounded, and he always contended to the very last against the 
 King of Terrors. He even rode in bad weather to see the sick, 
 when it was said that he was less able than they to go out, and when 
 he knew (who always watched and understood the progress of the 
 consumption in his own lungs) that himself could not last long. 
 Among the multitude of patients who came to consult him, were 
 many of the intemperate. There was generally no hope for them, 
 and when they retired I well remember how he would turn to his 
 pupils and lecture from their cases. These were the scenes which 
 made me at the age of fourteen form my vow or resolution of per¬ 
 fect temperance. 
 
 Of my father, I shall say less. He was a farmer. Of all the men 
 I ever saw he was the most truly just, impartial, and disinterested. 
 He was ingenious, laborious and persevering; unsparing of himself, 
 and sparing of the labors and sufferings of all other creatures, brute 
 and human, and most kindly affectioned towards all that could think 
 or feel. I can now recollect single expressions of his to me in boy¬ 
 hood, which taught me lessons of justice and humanity that, I hope, 
 have influenced me through life. Hot having much time for read¬ 
 ing, he was thrown back upon himself for topics to engage his ever 
 active mind. And, as moral and metaphysical speculations are those 
 which can be best prosecuted out of the closet and in the midst of 
 laborious occupations, so he dwelt much upon them. He had found 
 time, however, to read nearly all of value that had been written on 
 mental philosophy. He understood Locke, Hume, and Edwards, 
 •and could repeat Pope’s Essay on Man, I believe, nearly every line 
 
s 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 by rote, and this too without ever intending to learn it hy memory. 
 He had also read much of the best old English divines—Tillotson, 
 Sherlock, Leeds, and others whom I have forgotten. How he found 
 time to read them I cannot imagine; hut once reading was enough, 
 for he forgot nothing of importance which he had ever known, 
 besides all the thoughts of importance he incorporated into his own 
 mass. It is my opinion that his speculations, if reduced to writing, 
 would have made some clear addition to all that has been before 
 written on heads of metaphysical inquiry. Indeed, he was desired 
 by me and some other of his friends to reduce his views to writing, 
 but his engagements prevented it. In his advanced years, when he 
 had removed near me on the Genesee river, I engaged him in occa¬ 
 sional conversations in order to obtain some of his ideas more accu¬ 
 rately ; and I think I comprehended him on some points; on others, 
 I recollected them from my youth. I may possibly attempt to give 
 some sketch of the whole. I never have heard him on these sub¬ 
 jects without being struck by some idea that was new to me, and 
 this makes me apprehend that many very valuable thoughts have 
 died with him. In the practical concerns of life, he had much of 
 the quick and intuitive perception of truth wdiich I have mentioned 
 in the case of my uncle. He would see the right way of doing a 
 thing, and see it instantly. At Goshen they were building a steeple 
 to the church, the spire of which was finished below, and was to be 
 raised by machinery and placed on the square part of the tower. 
 When raised nearly to its place, a gin gave way in such a manner 
 that the spire swung out of the right direction and hung leaning 
 over, while its great weight and unequal pressure was thrown upon 
 some braces, which were yielding and breaking gradually. It seemed 
 alike fatal to the workmen to fly or stay, and consternation seized 
 the multitude, while the impending mass threatened ruin, and the 
 master builder was without resource. The most appalling circum¬ 
 stance was that there were several men so placed that they could not 
 be extricated, and if the mass fell they must fall with it. At this 
 moment of horror, my father saw where he could attach a chain so- 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 9 
 
 as to secure the works from further pressure in the wrong direction 
 and probably prevent the fall. He seized an ox chain, wound it 
 round his neck and shoulders, and mounted rapidly to the scene of 
 danger, regardless of the calls of his friends, whose attention was 
 now engrossed by the awful danger of his enterprise. He attached 
 the chain in such a manner as to save the crushing braces and all 
 was made safe. 
 
 My father and mother professed their faith in Christ before my 
 remembrance, and were members of the Presbyterian church. In 
 the time of my youth, difficulties arose in the church at Goshen, 
 owing to the overbearing and intemperate conduct of the minister, 
 who was supported by a small majority of the church, but con¬ 
 demned by the opinion of councils and other ministers and 
 churches. Those subjects were agitated with intense eagerness for 
 years, during much of which time my father was excluded from 
 church ordinances. When the excitement was over, and reason and 
 charity, I hope, resumed their sway, the church rescinded all their 
 measures, and restored my father, without any concessions whatever 
 from him, to his right of membership. 
 
 I was born at Salem in Waterbury, Hew Haven Co., Connecticut, 
 on the 9 th of May, 1772, at a house on the Hopkins farm, a place 
 about a quarter or half a mile south from the principal dwelling, and 
 which he now inhabited, as his father and perhaps his grandfather 
 had before him. I mention it on account of a tradition, which I 
 imperfectly remember, to this effect. My grandfather’s oldest 
 brother, John, was to have removed to some far distant place (Stock- 
 bridge, I suspect), but going there he found danger from the Indi¬ 
 ans, and so returned and lived in this house (which my grandfather 
 did or was to occupy). This great-uncle John I remember. I have 
 therefore seen a man who, in effect, was driven back by fear of the 
 Indians to within fourteen miles of Hew Haven. In 1826 I visited 
 the old Hopkins place. I had before seen it at the age of 16, and 
 before that at about 9 years old. Ho change except the slow work¬ 
 ings of time upon wooden buildings a century old! But the grape- 
 
10 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 vine was gone and the vast apple and pear trees rotting down with 
 age. I remember a scene which must have happened at the house 
 where I was horn, which must have been in April, 1774, when I was 
 23 months old. I was in petticoats and was mortified about it. 
 Memory now presents to my view that house, the dooryard and the 
 stone foundation and embankment as they then were, and when 
 more than fifty years after I saw the same place I found the same 
 picture was entirely faithful. 
 
 About May, 1774, my father removed to Goshen and in June fol¬ 
 lowing, being 25 months old, I received a bad cut in my foot. I 
 vividly and distinctly remember several facts about it, and such 
 peculiarly as a child would be struck with. But I never have 
 remembered the cut itself! Being the oldest grandchild, nephew, 
 &c., on both sides, I was in much request and often sent for, to and 
 from Salem. I must have been at the latter in the fall of 1777, for 
 I well remember my grandmother’s reading much in the papers 
 r Gmt Ty, for so the name of Ticonderoga was written and printed 
 + or brevity; and I remember feeling a sentiment of peevish dislike 
 at the frequent repetition of the senseless sound. From that time 
 my recollection furnishes a good many pictures of men and things 
 pertaining to Revolutionary times. Hence my frequent remark that 
 perhaps the period of my life embraces, up to this time, the most 
 interesting period of sixty years in civil history that has yet occur¬ 
 red. I remember something of the young men hurrying off to meet 
 Burgoyne, the deep and anxious solicitude with which my father 
 and his neighbors would talk of public affairs. I remember my 
 father being absent with the militia who marched in defence of New 
 York in 1776, when I was a few months more than four years old. 
 I very well remember the rejoicings at the capture of Cornwallis. 
 I have seen General Washington, been a little acquainted with the 
 elder Adams, and with Jay, Schuyler, Clinton, Pickering; have been 
 a good deal acquainted with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John 
 Marshall; and have been conversant in business of the bar with that 
 very extraordinary man Aaron Burr, and that very admirable and 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 11 
 
 wonderful man Alexander Hamilton. If, then, we add that the 
 entire history of the Federal Constitution and the entire revolutions 
 of Europe from 1789 come within my fresh recollections, you will 
 admit that we must look forward and not backwards for a more 
 important period in temporal affairs. 
 
 I remember some of the pangs of a little child sent to school and 
 condemned to sit in total inaction of body and mind for six hours a 
 day. Then the horrors of being compelled to commit to memory 
 unintelligible jargon. “ What is the chief end of man ?” “ What 
 
 are the decrees of God?” “What is grammar?” Look at and 
 recall the answer to the second question, and imagine the cruelty of 
 putting a child of five or six years old to commit it to memory! The 
 imperfect recollection now and then flits across my mind with feelings 
 of indescribable sadness. How happy am I, then, to live in an age 
 when the sunny morning of lovely infancy is not clouded by suffer¬ 
 ings of this kind ! I suspect that much of the irreligion which per¬ 
 vaded in the times of our admirable Puritanical ancestors had 
 foundation in the disgust which was caused by injudicious and ex¬ 
 pulsive teaching. By 10 or 11,1 had well recovered from all disliK<. 
 of the school. I had thoroughly studied the old system of Geogra¬ 
 phy (Salmon’s) which preceded Guthrie; and I devoured Robinson 
 Crusoe and Voltaire’s History of Charles XII., and it was decided 
 that I must have an education, if possible. 
 
 In the winter of 1781 I was sent to live in the family of Eli 
 Curtis, Esq., of Watertown, and to go to school. Mrs. Curtis was 
 daughter of my father’s uncle John, before mentioned. In 1781 I 
 went to live in the family of my uncle, Dr. Lemuel Hopkins of Hart¬ 
 ford, where I continued most of the time for four years. There I 
 laid the foundation of what classical knowledge I have, at the Free 
 Grammar School, and under the excellent instruction of Mr. Solomon 
 Porter. It seemed a matter of course that I should be a physician ; 
 and I perceived, in after years, that my uncle, who had no son, had 
 looked forward to me as a possible associate in future practice. In 
 1786 I gave myself wholly to Anatomy, Physiology and Medicine. 
 
12 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 I read Clieselden, Winslow, Ilaller, Hunter, Boorkaave, Yan 
 Sweeter (18 vols.) and Cullen, and I wrote abstracts and treatises, 
 and began to lay up written treasures of curious facts. But it was 
 decided that I was to go to college, chiefly on the motion of my 
 grandmother. 
 
 On commencement day, 1787, I left the farm work (at which, 
 during haying and harvest, I had helped my father), and took my 
 classical books, which for a year had been neglected. I was to enter 
 the Sophomore class, and I had six weeks to revise all the studies 
 preparatory to the Freshman year and to get, for the first time, a 
 large portion of those for that year also. I had got an idea that I 
 could do anything. So, in that time, I read all Virgil, a good many 
 orations of Tully, all of the Greek Testament, the greater part of 
 Horace, and revised my Arithmetic, Geography, &c. Those were 
 days at once of delight and sadness to my dear mother, for she fore¬ 
 saw that my course in life would lead me far from her, and that it 
 would be but a few weeks that she could ever again see me near to 
 her, to know that I was in health, and to nurse me, and to read to 
 me when I had a cold. 
 
 I passed three years at Hew Haven,—ardent, intensely studious, 
 factious, infidel, self-opinionated, loving my friends devotedly and 
 beloved by them. I scarcely doubted but I was to accomplish some 
 great thing upon the earth. By the diligent improvement of time I 
 laid in a stock of knowledge upon many subjects, particularly His¬ 
 tory, for the study of which I have had no other opportunity. The 
 spirit of Yale College was, at that time, a spirit of literary ambition 
 and of infidelity. But I must not enlarge upon these scenes, nor 
 trust my pen to begin to talk of friends, who with me are soon 
 to quit the world, when the memory of us and all that concerns us, 
 will be like the memory of the youth who lived before the flood. 
 Farewell,— farewell! Youth and the friendship of youth—with all 
 its hopes and dazzling expectations—I review you in order for the 
 last time; and we are hastening hence to stand before the Judge of 
 the whole earth. 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 13 
 
 I was not in good favor with the faculty, and took no pains to 
 conciliate their good will. But they gave me one of the three Eng¬ 
 lish orations for the commencement exhibition, which were then 
 reputed the highest appointments. I refused to attend, and they 
 refused me my degree, and the degree of LL. D., which they con¬ 
 ferred when Samuel entered college, was the first and only one I 
 ever received. Having resolved on the profession of law, I entered 
 in the fall of 1791 the office of Judge (then Mr.) Reeve, in Litchfield. 
 His law school contained more than twenty pupils, and was already 
 celebrated throughout the Union. He was altogether an admirable 
 man, of a purity, sincerity, guilelessness of heart, such as I have seen 
 in few men in this world. His daily lectures were most happy, from 
 his admirable faculty of carrying always on, a view of the reason and 
 history of every principle. I have no doubt but his lectures are yet 
 felt and long will be, in their happy influence upon the judicial 
 department of our country’s public economy. At a subsequent time, 
 he became a most devoted Christian. Admissions to the bar were 
 committed entirely to the members. In March, 1793, when I had 
 studied only about eighteen months, the gentlemen of the bar, most 
 unexpectedly to me, proffered me an examination for admission. 
 It was in violation of a general rule, and was a thing I had never 
 imagined possible, nor ever thought of, until it was offered. 
 I think it was immediately after my admission to the bar that I 
 had the small pox. The way then was, that certain physicians by 
 license from public authority opened hospitals for that express and 
 only purpose. Secluded places were chosen, on every avenue to 
 which a pole with a white flag on it pointed out to every wan¬ 
 derer the danger of approach. I escaped by a surprise upon 
 my parents, who supposed I was attending court until they 
 heard that the disorder had already passed every crisis of danger. 
 Farewell Litchfield and Goshen!—a country of storms and winter 
 and frightful cold and snow, and of hardy, active, reading, thinking, 
 intelligent men, who may probably be set forth as a pattern of the 
 finest commonalty upon the earth. As an example, take a glance at 
 2 
 
14 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 the state of society in Goshen. In that town of 1200 people, there 
 was no such thing as a poor or dependent family. No tenant; no 
 rich man except a single merchant. Every farmer tilled his 100 or 
 200 acres of land, chiefly with the labor of his own or his sons’ 
 hands. Until I left Connecticut I never had seen a person, male or 
 female, of competent age to read and write, who could not do both. 
 In different parts of the town were library associations, as is common 
 in New England; and that in our neighborhood contained the most 
 popular English works of history, most or many of the works of 
 Addison, Pope, Blair, Beattie, and some of Johnson, Hume, &c.; 
 and they were much read. I have attended an election there, and 
 the order and decorum were not less than appears in divine service. 
 No such thing as party was perceptible, even if there was some feel¬ 
 ing of it. The man who should in any way, direct or indirect, by 
 himself or by his friends, have intimated a desire for office, would by 
 that mere fact lose it. I remember hearing my father say of such a 
 man that “ he shook hands rather too much,” and seemed to be 
 fishing for popularity. If he had not shaken hands so much, my 
 father might have voted for him. These habits produced a wise, 
 just, and stable government, and a most perfect obedience to the 
 laws. The admirable form of the old Constitution of Connecticut 
 was adapted to bring men slowly forward into public life, and to 
 keep them much under public view. When long approved, they 
 held their seats very firmly; and the Upper House (Senate) of that 
 State has at times braced itself against the whole of the public opin¬ 
 ion and of the popular branch, and defeated an unwise but momen¬ 
 tarily popular measure. It contained but twelve men. My great 
 uncle, Joseph Hopkins, of Waterbury, was elected member of the 
 Legislature, I think, about seventy successive times; that is, twice a 
 year for upwards of thirty-five successive years. George Wyllis, of 
 Hartford, the third of that family, who was Secretary of State, was 
 elected to that office by the Governor and Council or by the Legisla¬ 
 ture, a little before he was 21 years of age, on the death of his father. 
 But the election of a Secretary of State belonged to the people, 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 15 
 
 except in the case of a vacancy ad interim. The people then, by a 
 general vote of the whole State, elected him to the same office sixty, 
 or one or two more than sixty, successive years, and he died in office 
 at upwards of 80. Such were the habits of a people whose govern¬ 
 ment was the most democratic on earth, except that of San Marino. 
 But I am digressing. 
 
 It must, I think, have been early in April that my father accom¬ 
 panied me on a ride west across the tremendous country of the 
 Ousatonic, and the fine country of Dutchess to Poughkeepsie, and 
 there I put myself under the tuition of two young lawyers of excel¬ 
 lent reputation. One of them is now enough known to the world as 
 Chancellor Kent. Clouds have gathered thick over the advancing 
 years of the other, Jacob Radcliffe ; but with both I have maintained 
 an unabated friendship of more than forty years; and to the latter I 
 desire to do so much justice as to say that, as a lawyer, and while a 
 judge of the Supreme Court, he was, on the whole, excelled by no 
 man of his day. My object was to acquire a knowledge of the prac¬ 
 tice of the New York courts, which then was thought no small art 
 and mystery. It used to be the sole business of a three years’ clerk¬ 
 ship in this State; and I was to acquire it in eighteen days, from 
 Monday morning of one week to Saturday of the third week. I used 
 to study perhaps sixteen hours a day, and pass two hours more in 
 the evening reciting to those gentlemen, or rather disputing with 
 them. I kept life in me by now and then running a mile or two to 
 a hill which overlooks the village. 
 
 Accordingly, on Saturday of the third week I embarked on board 
 the good sloop John Jay, and soon saw the wonderful city, the 
 compact parts of which extended to St. Paul’s Church and then up 
 Chatham street to the tea water pump or nearly. I had letters from 
 my uncle Dr. Hopkins to James Watson and Judge Ilobart, and 
 from Mr. Reeve to his brother-in-law, (since so celebrated as) Col. 
 Burr. We were five of us, New England young men, applying for 
 admission. 
 
 Burr made our motion, and when the Court sought to exclude us 
 
16 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 by an ex post facto rule, lie succeeded in exempting us from its oper¬ 
 ation. 1 passed a most splendid examination, and have often since 
 told my pupils that, if on signing the roll I had been desired to make 
 out the most common process, I could not have done it. My license 
 was dated on the 9th of May, 1793, the day I was 21 years old. I 
 was received with infinite kindness by the gentlemen to whom I had 
 letters. I told them I could no longer be a burden to my father, 
 and that I desired them to recommend me to a new country, where 
 I could most certainly earn $52 in the first year, since I could live 
 for $1 per week. They recommended Tioga, and gave me letters. 
 1 hastened home to Goshen. My father was at Hartford, as a mem¬ 
 ber of the Legislature. My mother searched the till of his chest and 
 found, I think, $10, or perhaps $10.25. With that and with a valise 
 which contained half a dozen shirts, a set of Blackstone, a skin of 
 parchment, bought at New York, and some black seals, and on the 
 horse Phoenix, which my father had raised for me, and which 
 Phoenix was the first in official order of all my line of Phoe¬ 
 nixes, I bade adieu to my mother and dear brothers and sisters 
 and took the road to an unexplored and unknown wilder¬ 
 ness. What a moment for my mother—what a moment for me! 
 One hundred and ten miles west from Catskill, through a country 
 almost all very new, brought me to the village of Oxford, and to the 
 house of Mr. Benjamin Hovey, the founder of it, and who about 
 eighteen months before had cut the first tree to clear the ground 
 where this village stood. Here, too, I found Uri Tracy (of the class 
 in college two years older than myself), and whom after nearly forty 
 years I still count among the most valued of my friends. Here I 
 took up my residence. Hovey was a man of very strong natural 
 sense and vigor in action, but of very little education. He had been 
 unfortunate in Massachusetts; his family had preserved life in this 
 wilderness for some days by eating the grain from the ear in the 
 unripe state. Suddenly he started for New York, laid open plans 
 for the settlement of lands to the proprietors whom he found. He 
 was taken up by old Gov. Clinton and his friends and admitted to 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 17 
 
 shares in their plans and speculations, built Oxford on his own land, 
 became the leading man of a very growing country, possessed a 
 great deal of property, relapsed into habits of intemperance—lost 
 all; finally left his family and died in obscurity far West. This is 
 the history of a great class of men. 
 
 I settled at Oxford as a lawyer. My first law-draft I made by 
 writing on the head of a barrel, under a roof made of poles only, and 
 in the rain, which I partially kept from spattering my paper by a 
 broad brimmed hat. In such a village as this, the first or second 
 framed building was an academy of two stories, and Mr. Tracy was 
 the teacher. No Yankees without the means of education ! Judge 
 Hobart, my friend and patron, was to hold the circuit in June at 
 Owego; and his kind notice of me was an excellent introduction to 
 the county. The first case I ever tried was in defending a man 
 indicted for forgery, which was death, and on which the attorney 
 general of the State in person supported the prosecution. Judge 
 Hobart sustained the objection I took, and the prisoner was acquitted. 
 And in this country I rode 80 miles to Newtown (Elmira) to attend 
 a Court of Common Pleas in my own county, and was too happy to 
 win a jury cause and get a fee of $8, perhaps the most gratifying I 
 ever received. Sometimes I rode all day in the rain, forded the 
 swift flowing Chenango in water up to my horse’s back, found my 
 whole library and stationery wet by the operation and lost my way 
 in returning up the river, the path—not road—being too blind to 
 follow. In attempting to follow the Nanticoke in a freshet I was 
 obliged to go in a canoe and forcing Phoenix into the river, to lead 
 him swimming while the ferryman directed the canoe. But how 
 wonderful is instinct! The horse had never swam before, yet when 
 he felt the force of the torrent, he breasted the stream, and dreading 
 to be swept downwards he carried the whole of us up stream so far 
 above the landing place, that the horse became entangled in floating- 
 tree tops and that I came near losing him. At another time I rode 
 west to Cincinnatus, where at 18 miles w r as a house, north 18 miles far¬ 
 ther off was another house, but in utter darkness at night I lost my 
 
IS 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 way and passed the night in one of the most incessant, steady, pouring 
 rains I ever knew. I visited Onondaga when but two white families 
 were in the “ hollow,” and attempted a rude estimate of the weight of 
 the water of the salt spring, when not as many as a dozen of the ket¬ 
 tles were in operation or ever had been. My name is first on the 
 roll of attorneys in Cayuga. I visited my friends at Goshen, and was 
 visited by my aged grandfather at Oxford. 
 
 I became convinced that I could grow up in the country and 
 become as rich as I wished. Col. Burr had, almost by force, made 
 me receive a library of choice law books, which he selected, saying 
 that “ I might settle it in my will,” if I pleased. But Mr. Watson 
 suggested the idea of a removal to .New York for the sake of the 
 society of able men, of mental improvement, and of professional 
 advancement. He afterwards invited me to his house, imported for 
 me about $1500 of law books, the foundation of my present law 
 library. He loaned me whatever money I had occasion for, and left 
 me to pay it (as I did) years after, from the avails of my professional 
 business. 
 
 I went to Hew York in the fall or winter of 1794 and took up my 
 lodgings in the princely and hospitable house of Mr. Watson, quit¬ 
 ting with a good deal of regret my Oxford friends, my village half 
 acre and charming new office, and taking Phoenix back to my father, 
 under the promise that he should be well and kindly kept as long as 
 he could live. He lived more than twenty years afterwards. The 
 winter of 179P-5 I employed in very intense study for counsel’s 
 examination. But in the course of that time Mr. Watson began to 
 propose to me the project, which occupied my time afterwards for 
 two years in Virginia and two in Europe. Virginia sold her lands 
 at two cents the acre, and not only so, but the vender had always 
 the right to make a selection from all her unsold lands in every part 
 of the State at that price. She had (and I suppose has yet) one pub¬ 
 lic office at which were sold land warrants for any number of acres to 
 any person. These the vender located, by a vague and general entry 
 in the county surveyor’s office, without metes, bounds, direction or 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 19 
 
 limits, and at his leisure afterwards caused the location to be sur¬ 
 veyed by an official surveyor, by which his location would be reduced 
 to certainty and recorded. Hence surveys and locations were inter¬ 
 mixed in every portion of the State, of every imaginable form, size 
 and number, filed on each other and intermixed, surrounded and 
 being surrounded by each other. Hence in Virginia and Kentucky 
 there arose a confusion in original titles, which it cost a long series 
 of years, with statutes of limitations to adjust, and which were often 
 finally quieted only because the parties were exhausted by conten¬ 
 tion. But the worst consequence is of eternal duration. It is the 
 want of all regular decisions for the purposes of social organization, 
 intercourse and action. The method of laying out a country by 
 geometrical lines, which after the times of the Pharaohs was first 
 practiced in Hew England, and thence transferred in more perfec¬ 
 tion to the more regular surface of Hew York and to all the new 
 lands of the United States, is an advance of inestimable value in the 
 means of social economy; and it is for the sake of this remark that I 
 have made this digression. A single conception of a single mind, in 
 a matter not then perceived to be very important, but by which a 
 thing is done in the best, instead of the worst, way, and order substi¬ 
 tuted for chaotic confusion, may happen to exercise an extensive 
 influence upon the well being of mankind for indefinite ages. 
 
 Upon the establishment of the Federal Constitution, capital and 
 credit and commerce had sprung up in this country as if by enchant¬ 
 ment. It was perceived that our lands had actual value, and that 
 an increasing population would soon occupy them, and in view of 
 the present and approaching convulsions in Europe, it was thought 
 no unreasonable expectation that persons of fortune there would be 
 disposed to lay aside something in the safest of all depositaries and 
 at an accumulating value. These Virginia lands, already surveyed, 
 were offered in Hew York at 4 cents the acre. But they might be 
 wholly worthless, or the titles might be bad or doubtful. Mr. Wat¬ 
 son observed to me that he had capital; that I had health, youth and 
 activity, and law knowledge enough to investigate titles. He devised 
 
20 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 an operation, for joint and equal benefit, to be predicated on my 
 personal investigations, and to be effected by purchases in Virginia 
 if found safe and advantageous, and by sales in Europe. 1 have 
 always supposed that his inducement was not so much his own 
 advantage, as the hope of giving me a competence without my wast¬ 
 ing a life in professional labor. I gratefully acceded to his offer, and 
 on the 13th of May, 1795, set out for Virginia, with letters of credit 
 and of recommendation, and on the 27th I arrived at Richmond. 
 My letters brought me to the acquaintance of John Hopkins, since 
 deceased, a most estimable man, and who for thirty years was my 
 friend, and by his advice I applied for legal directions to a gen¬ 
 tleman then rising in distinction—John Marshall. From Richmond 
 I rode on horseback to Botetourt and Montgomery counties, being 
 abundantly supplied with letters to many respectable gentlemen by Mr. 
 Hopkins, General Henry Lee, Col. Covington, and several other gen¬ 
 tlemen. I made a station at Col. Cloyd’s of Montgomery, whose son 
 Gordon Cloyd was county surveyor. On the 20th June, having se¬ 
 cured the services of two good woodsmen and hunters, and loaded a 
 pack horse with flour and bacon, I set out for a jaunt into the wilder¬ 
 ness to explore some of the great tracts of land which had been offered, 
 as well as to examine personally the nature of the country generally.. 
 We were in the woods twenty-two days, and the six last of them 
 without food or nearly so. This adventure was one of the most 
 remarkable events of my life. How Guyandott suddenly rose and 
 cut off our return, just when the last morsel, almost, was eaten; how 
 we were driven to the expedient of going round the head of the river, 
 into tremendous mountains with windfalls and laurel thickets; and 
 sometimes over beds of rocks ail humming with the buzz of rattle¬ 
 snakes beneath; how I became partially deranged with fatigue and 
 hunger; how after six days our horse finally failed, while we succeeded 
 in dragging our limbs to a little frontier settlement of the kindest 
 people on the earth—all this and more I may yet possibly draw out 
 from my journal and from memory and give you. Time forbids it 
 now,—and I must hasten to finish this memorandum already extend¬ 
 ing much beyond my expectation. 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 21 
 
 It was long before my constitution could re-establish its balance 
 after this affair, or rather, I think my health has never since been so 
 good. I spent some weeks at the Sweet Springs to recruit, and 
 among other exercises went to the lead mines, near the border of 
 North Carolina, to see my friend and cousin, Hannah Miles, then 
 Mrs. Herrick. It was wonderful enough that a Goshen girl should, 
 with her husband, a Dutchman from the Mohawk, fly to a mine in 
 the Alleghany ridge; but how odd the circumstance that business 
 should call me, her friend and cousin, to the same place! Late in 
 the fall I made arrangements for another excursion in the woods, 
 towards the Ohio and near the Little Kanawha. I was in the wil¬ 
 derness about the same period as before. My company consisted of 
 surveyors and their men, Anselm Tupper of Marietta being the official 
 surveyor. The excursion was pleasant, though sometimes fatiguing, 
 and at times we were without food. We killed a buffalo, deer, and 
 turkeys. We were cheered with the music of wolves, when, at 
 night, they scented our supper but, dreading our night fire, pealed a 
 chorus from hill to hill all around us. I boated the Ohio, ran upon 
 sand banks in the night and jumped into the water to help off the 
 ark. After seeing the poor French at Galliopolis and treading on 
 the soil now Ohio, when the territory did not contain 5000, perhaps 
 not 1000, white inhabitants, I returned through the interior of the 
 State to Richmond and to New York, about 900 miles on horseback. 
 The latter part of the journey was a winter ride. These two jaunts 
 made me a thorough woodsman, and in the course of the latter I 
 began to feel that sweet oblivion of life and all its cares and occupa¬ 
 tions which explains to me why it is that even white men when once 
 thoroughly inured to savage life, never desire to resume the habits 
 of civilized society. I saw nature and the face of earth wholly unal¬ 
 tered by the hands of man, and I saw men themselves in forms of 
 society approaching the rudest; and from their narrative of recent 
 Indian warfare (as we passed by the half burnt logs which belonged 
 to a dwelling where such and such a family had been massacred), I 
 acquired that intimate knowledge of this department of human life 
 
22 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 which could not otherwise be had. I was taught how a man might 
 sustain himself when in a great measure unaided by art and unprop¬ 
 ped by social order. To me it will seem that by these means I am 
 enabled to look at men—at nature, at society—with other eyes, or 
 from a better point of view, than those who have seen nothing but 
 cultivation, improvement and civilization. 
 
 On the 14th May, 1796, I again set out for Virginia to complete 
 my land payments and titles, visited Kichmond, the Sweet Springs, 
 the West, then again to Richmond, to Norfolk, Yorktown and back, 
 and on the 11th of July to New York, where it was resolved that I 
 should sail for Europe. I have journals of all these journeys, with 
 minute statements of expenses. To me every step has a deep inter¬ 
 est ; but my mind is shaded with a melancholy so intense, when I 
 recur to my memoranda of any part of my past life, that I have 
 hardly fortitude to do it. I am disappointed in this. I had pre¬ 
 served papers for the possible consolation of age. But farewell!—all 
 these events are hastening into the oblivion of a past eternity, except¬ 
 ing only as the great day shall reveal them,—I must hasten on. I 
 have not even the time to commemorate the many civilities I 
 received, nor the kind friends I made in Virginia. 
 
 On the 12tli of August, 1796, I sailed for England, in the ship 
 Joseph, Capt. Mooers. The only other passengers were Mr. Francis 
 Childs (who was first to edit a daily paper in New York) and his 
 lady, a very sensible woman. On our voyage we came near being 
 sunk by a waterspout, and 1 believe I was the first to announce 
 that this phenomenon is, without all doubt, electric. It is an upward 
 movement of the fluid (the cloud being negative) which takes up 
 water as a vehicle. We arrived at Falmouth about the end of Sep¬ 
 tember, and on the 2d of October Mr. and Mrs. Childs and myself 
 took a post chaise for London. The residue of 1796 and the winter 
 of 1796-7 was spent chiefly in attempts to negotiate my lands, of 
 which I had obtained upwards of 300,000 acres, such as I thought I 
 could safely and honorably recommend. American lands had become 
 disgraced by the operations of Robert Morris and others, and I 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 23 
 
 finally failed of my object. But I lingered in Europe, with the 
 assent of Mr. Watson ; partly witli the distant hope of better success, 
 but more to seize that opportunity of enlarging my knowledge of men 
 and things. Besides my business, my object was to sec and learn all 
 I could. London was to be seen and studied, but that alone would 
 be the labor of years. I aimed to see all remarkable institutions 
 and things—antiquities, curiosities, arts, men. I attended Parlia¬ 
 ment, and heard Pitt, Fox and Sheridan; the House of Lords, and 
 saw Loughborough on the woolsack; the King's Bench, and Lord 
 Kenyon, Ashburch, Gross and Lawrence; the Common Pleas, and 
 saw Charles Butler and heard him give an opinion, and no man in 
 England gained my admiration more than he. In the city, besides 
 my commercial friends, I became acquainted with Mr. Vaughan, the 
 author of the wet dock plan, since executed and shown as one of the 
 wonders of England. It was then “ a theory.” At his house 1 
 use to meet Mr. Colqulioun, the celebrated writer on Police. The 
 leading American gentlemen were Mr. King, our Minister, Mr. Gore, 
 Col. Trumbull, the painter, and Mr. Pickering—the three last on a 
 committee under the treaty of 1794. The friendship of Col. Trum¬ 
 bull and myself has continued unabated now thirty-five years. I 
 made excursions to other places; my studies were diversified and 
 general, not intending to practice my profession. I took with me a 
 good collection of American History, &c., to prove the necessary 
 progression of the country, and thence the necessary rise of lands. 
 I drew up and printed the paper, of which there are two or three 
 copies left among my private papers, entitled “ Facts and Observa¬ 
 tions, &c.” This paper seems to have fallen into the hands of Mr. 
 Malthus, as it is referred to by him, in a note to my copy of his 
 Essay on Population, with a remark that he did not know its authority. 
 
 Once or twice I was on the point of concluding a great operation. 
 The Bank of England stopped paying specie; then was the mutiny 
 of the Nore, and the reverses of the Duke of York in Flanders, and 
 the success of the French. Many capitalists thought of seeking 
 some safe investments in America, but did not love very plainly to 
 
24 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 avow it; and on the whole the firmness of the British nation, under 
 accumulated difficulties, inspired me with great respect for their 
 national character. 
 
 On the 20th April, 1797, Judge Tudor of Boston (late Judge 
 Advocate of the American Army), and Mr. Roope, a young English 
 gentleman, and myself, took a post chaise and started for a jaunt to 
 the West of England. At Slough, we called on Mr. Herschell, and 
 were shown by him his great telescope. But I must not attempt 
 even an allusion to the objects we saw—Windsor, Oxford, Blenheim, 
 Malmsbury, Bath, Bristol. Up the river Wye, Peersfield Walks, 
 Tin tern Abbey, Welsh scenery, Hereford Cathedral, Llangollen, the 
 cottage of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby. My birthday, 
 when 25 years old. The river Dee, Caernarvon, Snowden, Welsh 
 harpers, Bangor, Isle of Anglesea, Hollyhead. Here we embarked 
 for Dublin. 13th May, at Dublin, where we (Judge Tudor and 
 myself, for Mr. Roope was to proceed with us no farther than 
 Anglesea) were overwhelmed with hospitalities and kindness. One 
 day we dined with loyal and the next with disloyal men, and each 
 vied in telling of the atrocities committed by the other. The daily 
 news was of massacres and the burning of villages, and our company 
 at dinner was very often that of gentlemen driven in from the dis¬ 
 turbed districts. We were pressed with more invitations than we 
 could accept, and we fled (on 28th May) to avoid them. I must not 
 omit the mention of Dr. Arthur Brown, the Professor of Civil Law, 
 &c., in the University, who showed us great and marked civility. 
 He is the author of the work on Civil and Admiralty Law and of a 
 volume of essays which he gave me. He is an American from 
 Rhode Island. 
 
 28th May. Took passage in a boat on the grand canal to Attry, 
 41 miles, Carlow, Kilkenny, &c., to Cork. Here we had letters to 
 Admiral Kingsmill and to Mr. Cathbut and others, and from all 
 received great civility. To Killarney (oh ! Killarney !), Limerick, 
 back to Dublin; north through the country by Lagh Neah to Cole- 
 rain, Londonderry, Giant’s Causeway, Belfast, Donnoryhjodie, and 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 25 
 
 Port Patrick. Hail! Scotland! Sunday looks like New England, 
 except the plaids. To Lanark, to see Davy Dale’s village and manu¬ 
 factories; to Glasgow; to Edinburgh. Thence towards London, 
 passing Alnwick and many wonders, always loaded with civilities and 
 hospitality by the respectable persons to whom we had letters every 
 where. But I must not begin to speak either of persons or things 
 in detail. 
 
 28th July, 1797. Left London for Gravesend, and after some 
 delay got on board a Dutch fishing smack, under Danish colors and 
 getting a clearance from the celebrated Mazzinghi, who acted as a 
 kind of government agent, we sailed nominally for Emden, really for 
 Holland, passing in between Helvaesbeys and Gozee. The master, 
 deceiving as to the place of landing, put us on shore at his little 
 exquisitely neat village on some inner arm of the sea or river. 
 Nothing can exceed the order, neatness and quiet decency of this 
 Dutchman, his crew, &c. Our fellow passengers were a Monsieur 
 Hardenburgh, whom I have since supposed as the Baron Harden- 
 burgh, since celebrated as a Prussian diplomatist; and several English 
 merchants as agents, whose object was to get goods into France. From 
 Capt. Staple’s village, we coasted the arms of the sea or river, always 
 higher than the land, and from which the distant villages, as spires 
 or trees, were seen as if rising out of the water. We came as if 
 from the interior and landed on Beeveland; thence the great city of 
 Middleburgh to Flushing. I had no passport on account of the war, 
 but Mr. King had given me a certificate of being an American citi¬ 
 zen. The French officer at Flushing vised this, because he believed 
 it false, for he supposed I was English, and that my object was to 
 smuggle in English goods, which was the real object of my English 
 fellow travelers. 
 
 August 1. 1 took an open pilot boat and sailed up the wide, bois¬ 
 
 terous Scheldt, sometimes landing and walking on Indian matting 
 up the dyke and going over into the village below for dinner and 
 lodging. This is Lille ! Those distant spires are Bergen-op-Zoom ! 
 I am in the midst of names and things consecrated to everlasting 
 recollection! 
 
26 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 Antwerp, at tlie table d’hote of the Hotel D’Angleteere. The 
 town is all old fashioned, Dutch built, with grated windows. The 
 cathedral, the tower of 622 steps high, is as light and airy as could 
 be made of wood, and brings nearly all the Netherlands under its 
 view. What a country ! What a forest of towns and villages! But 
 grass grows in the streets of Antwerp. Saw the house of Rubens, 
 town-hall, &c. An excursion to antiquated Ghent. To Boom by a 
 diligence; on the carnal to Brussels,—the park is very magnificent. 
 To Lille. But the question was how I could get in, for this was 
 now treated as the proper frontier, and here we expected a strict 
 examination of our passports. Lord Malmsbury and suite were 
 there, he negotiating about peace; and there were many English in 
 the place, and my dress was of course English. So, before arriving 
 at the city gate, I stepped out of the “ diligence ” and walked care¬ 
 fully toward the gate, thoughtful and much at ease, rapping my boot 
 with a rattan as I walked, and seeming to take no notice of the senti¬ 
 nel. Lie took me for a resident Englishman and let me pass. I 
 had before taken the address of the hotel to which I wanted to go. 
 Behold, I am in France! Lille is called “Petit Paris.” But 
 what stupendous works are these fortifications!! As to our pass¬ 
 ports in going out of Lille, the way was, in going out early before 
 daylight of the morning; our diligence was very full, and the other 
 passengers smuggled me back out of sight; many passports were 
 shown to the officer at the barrier, and when he asked “ Are there 
 any more ?” some one of my friends answered promptly no,—and so 
 we drove on through Arras, Mevin (all riddled with ball holes) and 
 Amiens; and 10th August to Paris, at the Hotel de Philadelphie. 
 Early and late most intently employed in getting an idea of the city. 
 In a few days an officer waked me very early and showed me a seal 
 of the Republic, which I supposed was an arrest. “ Why need you 
 wake me so early, friend, I am not going away?” “They told at 
 the Police, sir, that your habit was to rise very early in the morn¬ 
 ing, and I should not see you if 1 called later.” It was a summons 
 to show my passport, which had now many visas, and they gave 
 some kind of paper allowing my stay, I forget what. 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 27 
 
 The 18th day Fructidor corresponded with the 5th September, 
 and was the day of the great coup d'etat , when Barras and two oth¬ 
 ers of the Directory arrested Carnot and Bartholemy and a majority 
 of the two Councils and sent them into banishment. All Paris rung 
 with the note of preparation some days before, and when we rose in 
 the morning it was known, as if by instinct, that the blow had been 
 struck. I walked early out to see the sight, and found cannon with 
 cannoniers and lighted matches pointing down every street. Before 
 this I had already met my old friend Savarin, as I accidentally 
 walked the Palais Royal. 1 forgot to mention, in its place, that he 
 taught me French in 1796 at New York. He had been a man of 
 fortune, was a thorough scholar, lately a member of the Constitu¬ 
 ent Assembly of France, tied in the Reign of Terror, had his all 
 confiscated, was now a member of the Court of Cassation, again lost 
 his office, and when I left France was on the staff of Jourdan in 
 Germany (or had lately been). “ It remains,” said M. Savarin, “ to 
 be seen, whether the departments will submit to this,” but Paris is 
 France. Through M. Savarin I made many desirable acquaint¬ 
 ances. Among others, Major Rostan, who I suspect, but do not 
 know, was afterwards Bonaparte’s Col. of Mamelukes, Mr. Mont¬ 
 golfier, the inventor of the air-balloon, &c. At Madame St. Hil¬ 
 aire’s, 555 Rue de Bacy, lodged Mr. and Mrs. Barlow, the friends 
 of my uncle, and my kind friends when we all lived under the same 
 roof at Hartford. How very curious that we should lodge at the 
 same hotel in France! There, too, was Robert Fulton, and my friend 
 William Lee. The society was excellent, but we spoke too much 
 English, and through M. Savarin I got into a French family from 
 Dijon, and afterwards into still another. I forgot the day of Bona¬ 
 parte’s return from his Venetian and Italian campaigns, and of his 
 reception by the Executive Directory at the Palace of the Luxem¬ 
 bourg. There I saw and heard the adulation of the French, and 
 came back and told Mr. Barlow that the French never could be 
 republicans. 
 
 But I must not attempt to enumerate. I read, studied, examined 
 
28 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 interesting objects, learned French and Italian, heard lectures, stud¬ 
 ied the drama and opera, and continued an infidel. My utmost 
 efforts were used to acquire all the knowledge I could. I think the 
 Commissioners sent by President Adams to treat with France were 
 already there. If not, they arrived soon afterwards, viz., Mr. Charles 
 Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry. They 
 were there all the winter unrecognized. It afterwards appeared that 
 the winter was spent in the X, Y, Z negotiation. Here I renewed 
 my acquaintance with Mr. Marshall, and formed one with Mr. Pinck¬ 
 ney, from whom (both) I received many civilities. My leading occu¬ 
 pations were scientific. I followed assiduously the course of lec¬ 
 tures by Charles, on Physics, with his most splendid apparatus in the 
 Louvre. (He gave it to the nation, in a fright in the Reign of Ter¬ 
 ror, but was allowed to use it.) Le Sage on Mineralogy a little, but 
 more particularly Fourcroy on Chemistry—a splendid lecturer. I 
 have still my notes in French taken from his lectures, written with 
 '?■' fountain-pen. General Pinckney and some of his family 
 a&,L ;d both Fourcroy and Charles. In the intervals, I read, made 
 coLursions, studied the paintings in the Louvre, the public buildings 
 ' other objects of art or of admiration. So passed the winter. 
 
 In Germinal (part of March) Mr. Lee and myself took a diligence 
 for Bordeaux to embark for America. “Farewell, Paris!” said I, as 
 I rose the gentle hills at the distance of three or four leagues and 
 looking back perceived the houses first, then the churches, sink out 
 of view. There—I can see nothing but the Pantheon and Notre 
 Dame! At length the Pantheon disappeared, and the Cathedra’ 
 which I had seen so flat and squat on an alluvial island of the Seine 
 —that Cathedral which, farmer-like, I had estimated by pacing it 
 and judged to contain about four acres,—that flat, squat, Dutch, barn¬ 
 looking building, rose towering above all Paris, and was the last 
 object which, turning often back, 1 could see when I finally said, 
 
 “ Farewell, Paris!” 
 
 Orleans, Blois (the seat of good French), Tours, Poictiers, Ang^ 
 leme, roads some of them muddy enough for old Genesee, bad 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 29 
 
 the vignerons uncovering their vines and tying them to the “ elms,” 
 and the elections for the year—these were some of the objects. The 
 elections were conducted under the point of the bayonet. We saw 
 the troops ordered into all the large towns, and the party opposed to 
 the Directory—that is, the candidates and their committees—were 
 put under arrest; 14 in Orleans, as 1 remember, and 9 in Tours, &c., 
 &c. Of course, the true republicans succeeded. 
 
 We had few days to see Bordeaux, its splendid quay and fine 
 theatre and decaying commerce. Then taking an open boat on the 
 
 Garonne we got on board the brig -, Capt. -, a dull 
 
 sailor. I tried to soothe my dreadful seasickness by reading Dupin’s 
 most learned atheistical work, “ Origin de tous les Cultes,” but I 
 never for a moment admitted atheism in my heart. Blessed be thy 
 name, O most holy God ! And 1 think that this doctrine, resulting 
 from other less rank infidelity, may have alarmed me a little by its 
 excesses, and given my mind some bias favorable to the subsequent 
 reception of religious truth. A wide ocean, dreadful weathe 
 poor plank only between me and water miles in depth, were 
 stances which ought to make any human heart wish to believe l 
 God of providence, and in Ilis care. But though I believed not 
 Him as the hearer of prayer, nor in special superintendence, yet He 
 bore with me and brought me safe home. “ Bless the Lord, oh ! my 1 ' 
 soul, and forget not all his benefits.” 
 
 Sixty days of adverse winds and currents had worn me down to a 
 skeleton with seasickness. Besides we were out of all provisions, 
 ixcept a little poor beef and bread ; and finding some fishermen on 
 the banks of Newfoundland, we got into one of their boats, which 
 to appearance was one of the dirtiest and least inviting of any vessel 
 I ever saw. But the fare was excellent, the treatment kind, the sea 
 smoother, the gales sweet and favorable, and the charges reasonable; 
 and in six days our kind fishermen landed us in Marblehead. My 
 country—my country—how sweet to me are the very rocks of thy 
 ■» dd and rough shore ! 
 
 Boston, Springfield, Hartford, New York. I soon after visited 
 3 
 
30 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 ray friends in Goshen. It was now the summer of 1798. Thus 
 ended the project which had kept me occupied for more than four 
 years, and it resulted in a complete failure. I had not sold my 
 lands; they remained a dead weight on Mr. Watson’s hands; four 
 years of my life had been spent, usefully in many respects, but not 
 as to advance me in my profession. Some precious years of youth 
 and strength had passed, and I was now to begin life in debt and 
 without a cent. Mr. Watson still extended to me his hospitality 
 and continued to make me a member of his family as before. I 
 took an office without delay; but in August the yellow fever broke 
 out with great violence and we were scattered. Congress had passed 
 an act for the assessment and collection of a direct tax of two mill¬ 
 ions. The commissioners to make the asesssment, of whom Mr. Wat- 
 son was chairman, met at Hudson and appointed me clerk. General 
 Gordon, the grandfather of Mr. G. Verplanck, was one of the com¬ 
 missioners, as also Moss Kent, the brother of the Chancellor. On 
 me devolved the charge of digesting a system for the valuation, 
 -sessment, appeals, and also for the abstracts and returns. The 
 mmissioners sanctioned whatever I did, and the whole went suc¬ 
 cessfully into operation. The plan and correspondence with the 
 Treasury were probably well conducted; but as a mere clerk, whether 
 as a writer or calculator, I was miserable. 
 
 In the fall of 1798 two events happened to throw a considerable 
 amount of business into my hands. Mr. Michael D. Henry, a very 
 respectable attorney, declining with consumption, left his business in 
 my hands in his lifetime and after his death. And my friend Jacob 
 Kadcliff, Esq., being appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court, did 
 the same. I had never well understood the forms of practice and 
 was now crude in my knowledge of principles, having forgotten 
 much which was to be understood and acted on at once—not a sin¬ 
 gle cause, but a multitude. How I ever got along with it is now 
 matter of amazement to me. I studied and wrought to the utmost 
 stretch of the powers of my fine constitution. At times I took a 
 blanket and pillows to my office, and passed the night sleeping an 
 
 f 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 31 
 
 hour or two at intervals, and studying or writing most of the time. 
 I had an impression that the lawyers of New York looked unkindly 
 at me, as not having served a “ regular apprenticeship.” I was too 
 proud to ask for information or fee counsel, and was the first young 
 counsel who had relied upon himself alone to sustain his client’s 
 cause. I was also the first eastern lawyer who had settled at New 
 York with the manifest purpose of making his way at the bar. 
 Business increased and paid off my debts to Mr. Watson—I mean 
 the pecuniary debt, for the debt of gratitude can never be paid. 
 
 Your mother and I were married on the 5th October, 1S00. We 
 went to housekeeping in May following in Broad street (No. 16) and 
 a house rent of $1000 a year. By this time I had an office full of 
 clerks. After either one or two years we removed to 274 Pearl 
 street, a house which your Grandpa Rogers gave to your mother. 
 Mary was born in Broad street; William, Julia Ann, and Hester in 
 Pearl street; Samuel in the village of Geneseo; Woolsey and Sarah 
 at my late house near Moscow. 
 
 In 1S06 your mother and I took a jaunt to Niagara Falls. It was 
 to me a relaxation from labor which I much needed. We traveled 
 with a phaeton and pair. It was a question of much speculation 
 whether we must not sleep in the woods one night beyond Batavia, 
 but it turned out that there was a house. I see a note in my journal 
 that for such a certain part of the journey “ no guide is necessary ! ” 
 But there was a four-mile woods in one place and a twelve-mile 
 woods in another. It was agreed that no spring carriage could pass 
 the road, and I left the phaeton and took a common wagon at Can¬ 
 andaigua. Mr. John Winthrop and B. W. Rogers were with us on 
 a great part of the road. 
 
 In 1808-9-10-11, indeed ever after the election of Mr. Jefferson, 
 the politics of the country excited a most intense interest. I was 
 always a Federalist, a disciple politically of the school of Washington 
 and of the framers of the Constitution, and all that I had seen abroad 
 seemed but to increase in my mind the dread of that extreme democ¬ 
 racy which is allied and leads to despotism. But the worst feature 
 
32 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 of it was, that the party was essentially French. The object was to 
 subjugate the country to French plans of aggrandisement. I entered 
 ardently into the contest of party politics, and I do not think that in 
 the retrospect I have aught to reproach in my motives. But it 
 engrossed too much of my time, as did also the affairs of the city, for 
 I was several years a member of the Common Council. Besides 
 this, when the embargo and restrictions came on, business most unex¬ 
 pectedly diminished. By a kind of common consent, nobody paid 
 and nobody was sued, and the lawyers were starved instead of fatten¬ 
 ing. Finally, and more especially, your relations on your mother’s 
 side were a very numerous connexion of people of unexampled pros¬ 
 perity, and of no little love of the “ pride of life.” As to me, though 
 I loved the pride of life as well as they, yet my business was never 
 of the most lucrative sort, nor had I any knack of making the most 
 of it. Mine was the business which came because it needed a hard¬ 
 working, persevering man, and not because it was bestowed by pat¬ 
 ronage. My family expenses were enormous, and I saw that I was 
 wearing out life to gratify a vain ostentation for which I was not 
 the better nor happier. I sought to get into the country and hoped 
 to save my life by escaping the terrible labors of my profession. 
 
 And a word about my professional life. I was excessively labori¬ 
 ous, caretaking and anxious. I made my client’s cause my own, too 
 much so, and held on upon it, as they say, with the grasp of death. 
 I was a stranger to selfish calculations, and having been brought into 
 deep sympathy with my client, I could never learn to set up my own 
 interest in my heart so as to obtain anything like just compensation 
 for my services. In this spirit I undertook charity causes and 
 fought them (one at least) with unyielding perseverance for years. 
 1 repeated the old trick of working alternately with catches of sleep 
 through the night, in which way I once went through a hearing of 
 eleven days in the Court of Chancery, alone myself against two very 
 eminent counsel. 1 was self-confident, even to presumption, and 
 yet the greatest suffering of my life has been from diffidence. No 
 description can give any idea of the throbs of agitation under which 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 33 
 
 I spoke in court, or waited to speak, and wliat was to me melan¬ 
 choly, it seemed not to wear oft’ with time. I almost never spoke in 
 any court or place in this part of my life without much distress, and 
 never without such agitation as took from me much of the power I 
 should otherwise have exhibited. In subsequent life 1 acquired com¬ 
 posure when speaking at the bar, but then the same distress clung to 
 me when speaking in other places and on other subjects, until I had 
 been long much accustomed to them. An address on temperance, 
 anti-masonry, or at a public anniversary, would rack my whole frame ; 
 and as these ar q post-obit confessions, I may now say, that for at least 
 ten years after I began to use extemporaneous prayer in my family it 
 was almost always performed with great distress, and I have seriously 
 doubted whether that distress was not the foundation of my long dys¬ 
 pepsia while living since at Albany. Even now in my sixty-first year, 
 it so agitates me, if I expect to be called on to pray in public, that I 
 am deprived of almost all enjoyment from the meeting. 
 
 On the whole, my success as a lawyer was sufficiently encouraging. 
 I probably held a better rank at the bar than any man of my years 
 had ever done in New York. What I aimed for with such intense 
 exertion was given me, but with it gall was intermingled, and I 
 began now to come to the time when a merciful Providence was, as 
 I humbly trust, leading me to Himself, though by “a way that I 
 knew not of.” I lived in a style sufficiently though not exceedingly 
 elegant. My connections were in the best rank of society. I had 
 public influence and popularity, though my party was not generally 
 successful. But a little check in business cramped my finances. I 
 began to see that with a rapidly increasing family I must reduce my 
 style of living or leave the city. It was with difficulty that I met 
 all my engagements on leaving New York. And although I saved 
 my pride and glossed over a removal, as well as I could, by talking 
 about health and country life (truly enough), yet in reality my 
 removal dashed all the fondest hopes of my ambitious and proud 
 spirit and was a sore and prostrating blow. Deep griefs took hold 
 of me, and were vented in floods of tears, seen only by Him who 
 seetli in secret, and thus I was taught to pray, or attempt to pray. 
 
31 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 In 1810 I purchased, jointly with your uncle, B. W. Rogers, a 
 share in two tracts of land which had been reserved by the Indians 
 or their agents or interpreters as, above all others, choice and delight¬ 
 ful,—that is Mount Morris and the Leicester tract on the Genesee 
 river. If the habitable globe contains any places more entirely excel¬ 
 lent and desirable than these two adjoining tracts, I know it not. I 
 bought merino sheep and went to farming. In 1811, I removed to 
 Geneseo, the village of my old and excellent friends, James and Will¬ 
 iam Wadsworth. From here I superintended my farm with unspar¬ 
 ing diligence and care until I could have a house prepared. In 1812 
 the war. In 1813-14 I was a member of the Xlllth Congress—an 
 election which was contrary to my expectation and wishes, and to 
 the duties of which my farm and building forbade my giving much 
 attention. Besides, I had hardly a party to act with, for a great 
 portion of the Federalists voted against all means to strengthen the 
 government, a course which (much as I disapproved of the war, and 
 well as I knew it was got up for party purposes, and that those pur¬ 
 poses were at bottom devised by French influence) I could not 
 approve nor acquiesce in. So 1 staid in Washington as little as I 
 could, and disappointed my friends by taking but little or no part in 
 the proceedings. In these same years I built my house. In August, 
 1814,1 laid out the village of Moscow on a plain which far and wide 
 was covered with a young growth of oak and hickory, so thick as to 
 be almost impervious, and such as prevented me from getting any 
 just knowledge of the extent and shape of the plain, except by actual 
 mathematical survey. But I have passed some scenes of deep inter¬ 
 est. My brother Mark was agent for our company, who had pur¬ 
 chased a large share of Mount Morris, and he began by sowing about 
 100 acres of hemp, which we intended to raise for the JSTew York 
 market. While we were making the first day’s trial of some in ven- 
 tions to facilitate the cutting of such a harvest, he fell suddenly sick 
 in the field, and that was the commencement of a bilious fever which 
 for some time we expected would prove fatal. Our good cousin 
 Mary Smith (Mrs. Ayrault) was almost alone his nurse and house- 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 35 
 
 keeper. Expecting lie would not live, I wrote a statement of the 
 facts to my dear and excellent mother, then at Utica with my sister 
 Susan. She came hastily on, with a strong presentiment that she 
 should not live, and soon sickened. My father then left Mt. Morris 
 to help to take care of my mother, and as we walked in the fields 
 for some herbs he stumbled as if drunk, and immediately fell sick at 
 my house of the same fever. My practice now was to ride to Mt. 
 Morris, six miles, and see to the state of my brother and attend the 
 consultation of physicians, oversee the work and employment, the 
 food and payment of twenty or thirty men, or more perhaps, who 
 were cutting hemp, ride home in the evening and attend to my 
 father and mother. My father and brother recovered; my mother 
 died and is buried in the graveyard on the hill east of Geneseo vil¬ 
 lage. A partition only separated my two parents as one lay dead 
 and the other expecting to die. I heard my father call my mother 
 in very affecting terms. Supposing him a little delirious, I said, 
 ‘“She is dead, sir; don’t you remember it?” “Yes! I know very 
 well that she is dead.” He of course was unable to attend the 
 funeral, but he would rise and look at the procession through the 
 wdndow. The physicians came to me and said they saw no more to 
 do for him. “ Well, gentlemen, let me know when you consider all 
 the resources of regular practice exhausted ; when you do so, I will 
 take my own course.” “What will you do?” “I will try baths in 
 some shape, cold or hot.” They retired again on this, and ordered a 
 hot salt bath, which I personally administered by means of a mattress 
 and blanket, the latter wrung out in the brine and often changed. 
 On the second immersion a little sweat started from the forehead, 
 and my father lived near seven years longer. 
 
 One of the most delightful dreams of my fancy in going to the 
 West was to have my parents near me, so that we might live in each 
 other’s society, and some in turn might close the eyes of the others. 
 It was otherwise ordered, and I already began to see the clouds of 
 disappointment gather around my new establishment. I cleared 
 land, fenced fields, and multiplied my sheep. I built a house, a vil- 
 
36 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 lage, and mills and farm buildings. From the river my operations 
 extended back to the pine woods, near three miles. But I made 
 these improvements at the enormous war prices of labor and prod¬ 
 uce, and when in turn I had the wheat of 100 acres to sell, it would 
 not command in cash 25 cents per bushel for any quantity, great or 
 small; and the wool of 1500 sheep sold proportionally low, or nearly 
 so. Of these sheep a select flock of 300 were bred with more care, 
 I presume, than any other man ever used. I have the names (num¬ 
 bers), crosses and pedigree of all the breeders registered, with annual 
 samples of the wool of each. And while mentioning my flocks, 1 
 must not forget the name of my most estimable friend, my shepherd 
 Malcolm McHaughton. He was among the men I have known, as 
 most truly respectable, just, faithful, diligent and devoted to my 
 interest. He was brought up in the highlands of Scotland, and 
 could read his Bihle in the language of Ossian before he could speak 
 a word of English. 
 
 My ten years of life on the Genesee river were years of very high 
 excitement and effort. My engagements, public and private, were 
 important and very diversified. There was much enjoyment in the 
 various enterprises in which I was engaged. I was in the full tide 
 of whatever strength of body and mind I ever possessed. I acted 
 practically on the notion that nothing was too much for me. I pur¬ 
 sued my projects with most incessant and vigorous effort, but all 
 tended to disappointment. The clouds of adversity gathered, and 
 its storms began to beat hard upon me. A just and merciful Provi¬ 
 dence found many ways, by me unthought of, to make all my enter¬ 
 prises, however diligently and carefully conducted, to issue in loss. 
 But my real estate had greatly risen in value, and seemed enough to 
 meet, in the last resort, all possible deficiencies. As late perhaps as 
 1817, it was estimated on a very careful revision, with the aid of 
 friends, as worth $74,000 or $75,000, and in two or three years after 
 I was glad to accept a bank check of $25,000 for the whole. Years 
 after it was gradually explained that the utter disappearance of 
 money, which reduced me and many thousands besides to ruin, was 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 37 
 
 the necessary result of operations to restore a vitiated currency, and 
 that the vitiation was the fruit of the labors of politicians and dema¬ 
 gogues. Quicquid delirunt reges, jplectuntur Achivi. 
 
 I must not leave the Genesee river without a tribute of respect 
 for the admirable circle of society which, new as the country was, it 
 was our happiness to enjoy. I must not begin to name individuals. 
 Our visiting circle extended to Canandaigua, and so thirty miles 
 around. Oh, what brilliant-minded women and what able, intelligent 
 men were in that circle ! What a truty polished society ! Oh, that 
 more of them had gained the true knowledge and accumulated the 
 riches that will never fly away ! 
 
 Neither must I quit the place without a tribute of everlasting 
 affection for your excellent mother. The disappointments of my 
 life have often been to her a cup of humiliation and sorrow. She 
 had been brought up with no idea of any limitation of means of any 
 kind. She knew nothing of life except as a scene of elegant and 
 refined enjoyment and gratification. Judge, then, what was my 
 anguish, when I was finally compelled to inform her that we had 
 not the means to keep up our style of living in New York; that I 
 thought we must go into the country; and when we moved, first 
 into an old house that had been a dirty tavern, and then into an 
 unfinished house, and then to meet the various occasional wants of 
 the country ; and then, when I had finally made one of the most ele¬ 
 gant establishments in the State, what must have been my anguish 
 and hers, to find that we must leave a place to which her heart, as 
 well as my own, had been wholly knit! Through all this and 
 through the subsequent difficulties of life your dear mother has fol¬ 
 lowed me. She left parents and many friends that were dear to her; 
 she has most kindly reconciled herself to very trying changes, in 
 which my heart has often deeply sympathized with her, regarding 
 her sufferings much more than my own. Dearest wife, this is for 
 you, too, to read when I am gone. Accept, I pray, as my poor 
 acknowledgment for all you have endured on my account. 
 
 Losses came upon losses like the beating of hail. But the greatest 
 
ss 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 was that money disappeared from the country and property ceased 
 to have any but a very low exchangeable value. When afterwards 
 1 came to sell my Moscow estate, at a loss of $50,000 compared with 
 its late salable value, I deemed the sale rather a fortunate escape. 
 It left me in debt, though not heavily so, beyond all my means of 
 payment. 
 
 My father died at Mt. Morris in March, 1818, and I buried him 
 in the new and till then unoccupied burying ground on the hill west 
 of the village. His death conspired with the unpromising aspect of 
 all my prospects in life to make me sorrowful and thoughtful; and, 
 in proportion as I was so, I think I found myself disposed to hum¬ 
 ble myself under the mighty hand of God,—to acknowledge his 
 justice and to submit to his chastisement. As I now write this, it 
 seems to me as if much of these expressions would truly represent 
 the feelings of a heart renewed in His image, but such was not then 
 the idea of myself. I however very well remember the time when, 
 riding sad and lonely on my horse, my heart very distinctly said: “I 
 will be on the side of Christ; I will go and make my father’s place 
 good in his church.” I do not believe that I then thought of my 
 own state, nor reflected on the question whether my heart was or 
 had been changed or not. But I continued in my purpose to join 
 myself to the people of God, and was received into the church at 
 Moscow, where the Rev. Mr. Mason was then preaching. Oh, 
 that it may finally appear that I am a member of the invisible 
 church of the Redeemer! If so, then how merciful have been all 
 the disappointments, rebukes and humiliations which a righteous 
 God has administered to me. The best account I can give of my 
 exercises, at or about this time, is very poor. 
 
 In the spring of 1822 I sold off, paid off, broke up and traced my 
 course to Albany. 1 had made every previous arrangement there, 
 having been a member of the Senate and attended there during the 
 winter. My object was to live by my profession of the law, and 
 after much consideration and advice of professional friends I pre¬ 
 ferred Albany to Hew York. Rent was low and living cheap at 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 39 
 
 Albany, but with $2000 in hand I would have gone to New York. 
 Albany, before the canal was open, was rather in decay, and it was 
 the place in the State where I had the least hold on the ground of 
 personal interest. Before my wife’s furniture and my own library 
 were put up, I was taken down with typhus fever. My excellent 
 friend, Dr. Daniel James, carried me safely through it in three or four 
 weeks, and it was followed by five or six years of dyspepsia. The 
 most unhappy effect of this disorder was that it rendered me inca¬ 
 pable of intense application to study or business. 
 
 Albany received us with great hospitality, but gave me no busi¬ 
 ness. I was, however, extensively known to lawyers in the city of 
 New York and in all the country and I had a considerable run of 
 bar business, which by degrees came to be poorly paid, that is from 
 the country, when it was found that I was not exact in demanding 
 my dues. Chancellor Sanford appointed me reporter in his court. 
 I published his decisions in one volume, a book which I presume is 
 exceeded by few in the English language in point of mechanical cor¬ 
 rectness. I know of one typographical error in it, which I presume 
 no other human being knows, or will ever find. I doubt whether 
 any one other is to be found. I learned this habit of great exactness 
 in proof-reading from Mr. S. himself. Indeed, he made it a condi¬ 
 tion with me, and he read all the proofs once. I, and others also, 
 read them with great care. With all these means, I lived. But my 
 family was large. Some of the time—nearly all—perhaps quite all 
 of them were in a course of education, and my pecuniary circum¬ 
 stances were at times much straightened. Often then I spread my 
 case before Him who hears prayer, and wonderful to tell, I often 
 received relief from unthought-of sources, at the last and trying 
 moment. Doubtless Thou art a God hearing prayer! and let all my 
 powers and faculties bless and praise Thy holy name. IIow very 
 merciful and kind hast Thou been to me! 
 
 About 1826, and afterwards, I was appointed (with Messrs. Tib¬ 
 betts and Allen) a commissioner, and continued by sundry acts of 
 the Legislature, with various powers, in relation to State Prisons and 
 
40 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 Penitentiary punishment. We built and governed the State Prison 
 at Sing Sing. These engagements arose from the opinions which I 
 had expressed and reported in the Senate (and the year previous 
 had expressed in the other house) relative to the old State Prison 
 system. They led to my essay on State Prison Punishments. The 
 public benefit of the joint efforts of us commissioners was the estab¬ 
 lishment of the new, or Auburn system of discipline, in this and 
 many of the States, with the near prospect of its general establish¬ 
 ment among civilized nations. So far as I can now see or judge, I 
 suppose this to have been the most useful labor of my life; and I 
 attach the more importance to it, because our system was violently 
 attacked and held for a long time a doubtful existence, and was 
 finally sustained with much difficulty. The celebrated Mr. Roscoe, 
 of Liverpool, was our most formidable opponent. After all, the 
 Legislature turned me out with much abuse and opprobium. But 
 the system remains, much obscured, however, by the political neces¬ 
 sity of a corrupt pecuniary administration, in order to keep politicians 
 in pay. 
 
 Your grandfather Rogers died in 1826, leaving a much larger for¬ 
 tune than we supposed he possessed. From that time your mother’s 
 dividend of his estate has placed us in comparatively easy circum¬ 
 stances. Thinking that I had done enough of hard work in life, I 
 now determined to renounce the pursuit of a thorny and ungrateful 
 profession (except as an object of science) and devote my time to my 
 health—my family; to such benevolent objects as might fall in my 
 way; to any useful purpose towards my age, generation and country ; 
 and to prepare to meet my God. Oh! holy and blessed Spirit of all 
 grace ! give me that preparation. 
 
 The discoveries made of the crimes, the oaths and obligations, and 
 the excesses of Free Masonry, induced me to join in some efforts of 
 the Anti-Masons, while their cause appeared young and feeble. 
 Since they became stronger, I aim to withdraw. Still I have great 
 fears lest Masonry should resume its action and triumph. If it does 
 so, then a final adieu to any government than that of the lodges. 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 41 
 
 I expected to live and die in Albany, but in 1831, as you know, 
 our Geneva friends suggested the idea of our removal to this village, 
 and last May, ten years after we had gone through this place east¬ 
 ward, we returned on our tracks to this charming place. So little is 
 it in man to direct his own steps. 
 
 Labor and penury seem to be accounted the great evils of human 
 life, and as soon as our altered circumstances relieved me from these, 
 I began to enjoy life in a way unknown before, and which can never 
 be conceived by those who never knew toil, anxiety and want. 
 But since our removal to Geneva my life has been one stream of 
 enjoyment. I would here begin to enumerate my mercies, but they 
 are more than I can tell, and if I should begin the account I should 
 doubtless omit many. “ I have all things and abound.” I have no 
 crosses nor cares. Life is made so exceedingly delicious to me, that 
 I seem to myself an exception to the lot of man. I ask, with sur¬ 
 prise and some fear, whether any disciple of the Saviour was ever 
 without any thorn in the flesh, or what is he, who experiences no 
 chastisement, to think of himself ? Oh ! thou merciful and gracious 
 God, who hast made this part of the closing years of my life so 
 exceedingly delightful to me, grant me the aids of thy good Spirit 
 that I may rightly use these blessings; may I give thee all thanks 
 for thy great goodness. Oh, that I may not take my final portion 
 in these friendships, happy as they are, nor in any of the temporal 
 sweets by which 1 am here surrounded and with which I am filled; 
 but oh, grant me a still sweeter mansion, flowers that fade not, health 
 that decays not, these same friends in immortal and glorified bodies, 
 —all, all derived from thy blissful presence, from the smiles of my 
 Saviour, and the society of saints and angels and the spirits of just 
 men made perfect! 
 
 To bear my testimony to the very peculiar (as I suppose it) mercy 
 of God, in this signal dispensation of earthly good, to one who has 
 led a life so little worthy of it, is no small part of the object of this 
 paper. What else remains for me, thou God knowest; and to thee, 
 with all my heart and soul I most cheerfully, gratefully, submissively 
 confide myself. 
 
42 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 Much remains to say : much I could add of advice and the fruit of 
 observation on many subjects. I did intend, too, to have stated the 
 plans of intellectual labor which I could wish to execute; for since 
 reason tells me that, at the utmost, I cannot execute the half of 
 them, and may not begin even one, so I could wish you to know 
 what I had thought of. And it is very delightful to me to keep on 
 writing in this posthumous kind of way, to children who have been 
 to me so good and affectionate. But my remarks are extending too 
 far. Time passes. Life is hastening away. 
 
 Farewell, farewell, dearest wife and dearest children, till the heav¬ 
 ens be no more ! And through infinite riches of grace in Jesus 
 Christ our Saviour, may we all, all meet at His right hand in heaven, 
 thence to go no more out forever! Amen. 
 
 Sam’l. M. Hopkins. 
 
 Geneva, 26th Dec., 1832. 
 
 The following letter was written and addressed to a daughter, by 
 Mr. Hopkins, on visiting the place of his birth and the scenes of 
 his childhood:— 
 
 Sunday Morning, Oct. 14, 1821. 
 
 This is a part of my journey through Connecticut, of which I 
 intended to give you a particular account. This morning I am alone 
 in my room, with no proper book for the day, and until church 
 begins I may as well write, although 1 may but commence my story. 
 You know I was born in Salem, a parish in the town of Waterbury, 
 in H. Haven County, but brought up in Goshen, in Litchfield 
 County. It has been my desire to see both places once more in my 
 life, and on my way from Albany to Litchfield I was devising some 
 possible way to glance at the place, which used to be off the stage 
 road, but behold, the stage passed by my father’s former home at 
 Goshen. Palmer, his successor, keeps an inn at this place. I told 
 who I was and asked for a candle to look at my part of the house. 
 All was just as my poor father made it forty years ago. I looked at 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 43 
 
 the room where I usually slept when a boy; at my mother’s bed¬ 
 room ; at the East room, which my grandparents occupied when 
 they came to lean upon my father; and then at the spare bedroom, 
 which was afterwards my study and where I began some of those 
 excessive exertions at my studies, by which alone I have been able, 
 under heavy burdens in life, to bring myself forward among the 
 ranks of men of education and of cultivated minds. In that room I. 
 compassed in six weeks, without an instructor, the usual reading of 
 a year in the classics at school. The next year I brought home 
 Euclid for vacation amusement, and for sixteen hours a day pored 
 in rapture over the intellectual beauty of the combinations of quan¬ 
 tities and the proportions of lines and angles and figures. I looked 
 all about. The days of childhood and youth; parents that nurtured 
 me and are gone; brothers and sisters that played or worked with 
 me, and sent me little presents of nuts and fruits at college;—all this 
 and a hundred other things rushed upon my memory with inexpres¬ 
 sible emotion. I was almost willing to be gone. It was light 
 enough for me to roam to the brook where I used to play in the 
 water in summer, and slide and break my head in winter. Every¬ 
 thing affected me. I could see that the fences were just where they 
 were when I was just old enough to drive home the cows, and the 
 bars stood in the same place as when I used to toil and strain to put 
 them up, and get angry because 1 could not do it. 
 
 I looked at the foundation of the house again; the stone abut¬ 
 ments which support a little garden under the front windows, and 
 they bore the marks of the chisel or drill when it was in his labori¬ 
 ous hand ; with unsparing effort he placed the foundation just right. 
 But there is no end to all this. It cannot interest you as it does me, 
 to whom the days and the scenes and some of the friends are gone 
 forever. So farewell, dear lost scenes and friends—I shall not see 
 you again till the heavens be no more! 
 
 I ought not to forget that, a mile above, I passed the house of our 
 Aunt Smith. Capt. Smith was a man amiable, modest, and just,— 
 the excellent husband of our excellent Aunt Smith. Of feeble 
 
SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 44 
 
 health, and in such a country, he could have but slender means, yet 
 were his family the charming people whom you see,—which may 
 show us how much worth and excellence often resides in retired 
 corners of the earth with little worldly distinction. 
 
 Passed on to N. Haven. Received every attention from Presi¬ 
 dent Day at the agricultural oration, and also from Professor Silli- 
 man and Mr. Whitney, and even Father Rillhouse; was taken and 
 placed in the same pew, and walked in procession with them. I was 
 gratified to see, wherever I went, so many good men to associate 
 with, and all of them so disposed to treat me with favor and distinc¬ 
 tion. The society of wise and good men is doubtless one of the 
 most valuable privileges and highest enjoyments of this life, except¬ 
 ing only those which especially appertain to one’s relations to our 
 Redeemer. 
 
 At Litchfield passed a day at Governor Wolcott’s, charmed as I 
 always was with the weight and excellence of his conversation, 
 though not always agreeing with him in opinion. Passing through 
 this country in the stage, and in the solitary hours of a night ride, I 
 thought over the goodness of God which, among so many trials, bur¬ 
 dens, dangers and toils, has still left me that best enjoyment—to 
 use and cultivate my mental faculties, to love the wise and good, and 
 to be loved by them. Pleased with the train of thought, and grate¬ 
 ful to the Author of all good, I meditated in prayer. 
 
 To my Father and my God:—Thou art my God, and I will bless 
 thee,—my Father God, and I will exalt thee. I desire now to bow 
 myself with gratitude and with deep humility before thy glorious 
 Majesty, and to come before thee with a tribute of praise and thanks¬ 
 giving for all thy goodness and mercy and loving kindness to me. 
 Thou art my Creator. I bless thee that I am again led back by thy 
 providence to this spot; to the place where thou didst first uphold 
 my helpless infancy. Here thou gavest me kind parents and affec¬ 
 tionate friends, who nursed and smiled upon my childhood. It is 
 thy power which guarded me from danger, and fed and defended 
 me, clothed and sheltered me and upheld my life from infancy to 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 45 
 
 childhood, from childhood to youth, to manhood and till this time; 
 amidst dangers and vicissitudes, and through all my wanderings on 
 the earth; in the cities of men, in the wilderness, on the stormy 
 ocean; from pestilence, from tempest, from war, and from the vio¬ 
 lence of evil men, thy watchful and guardian care has still been my 
 protection. When I was unconscious of thy power, that power was 
 my support. When I denied thy providence, that providence still 
 guarded me. When I was unconscious of thy power, that power 
 was my support. When I sinned against thee, thy long suffering 
 and forbearance still did not cut me off; and now having obtained 
 help of thee I continue till this time, desiring to witness, both to 
 small and great, that God is merciful. After fifty years thou hast 
 brought me again to the place of my birth, and to the land where 
 my fathers were born. On this spot 1 desire to remember, before 
 thee, that thou also hast been the God of my forefathers, and that I 
 was born of ancestors who lived lives of prayer, and in whose hands 
 was thy written word, and in whose hearts, as I humbly trust, was 
 repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Hitherto the Lord hath helped me. Thou hast cast my lot among 
 the wise and the good, and given me the means of being useful 
 among my fellow men. I desire to bless thee for the partner thou 
 hast given me; for my children; for friends, relations, and social 
 and mental enjoyments, and for the unnumbered blessings of thy 
 providence by which I am surrounded. I have more abundant rea¬ 
 sons to bless thee and praise thee for the gifts of thy grace; that I 
 am not left without God in the world; that I am allowed to seek 
 thee in prayer; that I am disposed to look to Christ for redemption ; 
 to thy Holy Spirit for light and comfort and sanctification; to God 
 my Judge for reconciliation and pardon. What is my house, and 
 what is my father’s house, that thou hast dealt thus bountifully with 
 thy servant! What shall I render unto the Lord for all his mercies! 
 1 will come before the Lord with thanksgiving and praise. I will 
 devote myself to thy service. I will seek thy blessing and depend 
 upon thy help, and may thy grace be sufficient for me. Go with 
 4 
 
46 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 me, I beseech thee, through the residue of life. Guide me through 
 this vale of tears. Support me in sorrows and discouragements. 
 Give me each day my daily bread. Leave me not, neither forsake me, 
 O God of my salvation. Be a God to my children, whom I com¬ 
 mend to thee. In all the changes of life, wheresoever those children 
 shall live or wander or be settled in thy world, be thou their God and 
 portion, their Saviour and Deliverer. And grant, O God, that in 
 thy kingdom of glory we may all again be brought together to wor¬ 
 ship thee forever. For what remains of life, give me grace to serve 
 thee in sincerity and truth. May I remember the day is far spent 
 and the night cometh when no man can work. Enable me strictly 
 and truly to examine myself whether I be in the faith. Oh, help 
 my unbelief. Bring me back from all my infirmities. Confirm me 
 when I waver. May thy Holy Spirit guide and instruct me. Be 
 thou my all-sufficient God. To thee I wholly commit myself. To 
 thee, O God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I ascribe all honor, bless¬ 
 ing, praise and dominion, forever. Amen. 
 
REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL MILES LIOPKINS, 
 
 CONTRIBUTED BY HIS CHILDREN. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM “FAMILY SKETCHES,” 
 BY PROFESSOR S. M. HOPKINS, MARCH, 1898. 
 
 Of my ancestors, I know little or nothing. My paternal grandfather, named 
 Samuel, was persuaded by my father, in the time of his prosperity, to remove 
 from his hard Goshen farm and follow his son’s fortunes into the “Western 
 country. ” He was comfortably established in the young village of Mt. Morris, 
 and cared for, until his death from the deadly bilious fever of the country in 
 1818. He was, I think, the first person buried in the Mt. Morris cemetery, the 
 ground for which was given by my father. 
 
 As to my father’s physique, the portrait, now in possession of his grandson. 
 Doctor George G. Hopkins, of Brooklyn, gives a fairly good idea of his spirited 
 intellectual head and countenance. His soft brown hair grew thin in later life, 
 but never turned gray.—his eyes were a light blue. He ante-dated the era of 
 beards, and always shaved his face carefully,—his thin skin obliged him to be 
 very choice in his razors and their treatment, and he rather prided himself on 
 his skill in keeping them in the best order. 
 
 One could not every day meet with so fine a figure of a man,—he was just six 
 feet high, and perfectly formed for strength and activity. When in Paris, at 
 the age of about twenty-five, he was called “le Phoebus Americain ,"—upon 
 his farm, and surrounded by his stalwart “hands,” it was always understood 
 that he was the best man on the ground. 
 
 He was a fine horseman, and took pleasure in mastering a spirited or fiery 
 animal. When in Albany, he always kept a good saddle horse,—-the one I remem¬ 
 ber was a large and powerful bright bay. Mounted upon this steed, with his 
 own gallant and chivalrous bearing, he drew all eyes as he trotted through the 
 streets. Later, in Geneva, he sometimes rode one of a pair of carriage ponies— 
 a vicious brute which had thrown me two or three times, and which at length 
 succeeded in leaving him on his back in the village street,—after that he never 
 put foot in stirrup again. 
 
 My father’s adventure in farming having failed, and involving him in debt, 
 he had no other resource but to sell everything on the best terms he could—at 
 an immense sacrifice indeed—and return to the practice of the law. It almost 
 
 47 
 
4S 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 broke liis heart. He detested the profession, and was, in some respects, ill 
 suited to it. He had missed his proper career, which was that of a Professor of 
 Moral Philosophy or Political Economy, or teacher at the head of a law-school. 
 
 He was essentially a philosopher and teacher. His knowledge of the princi¬ 
 ples and history of law was unsurpassed. He had the discrimination, the 
 analytic skill, the candor and fairness, that would have made him an ornament 
 to the judicial bench. But he was not hard enough to make a successful law¬ 
 yer; he had too much sympathy and sense of justice; and a certain nervous 
 diffidence in public speaking made it impossible for him to argue causes before 
 a jury. My impression is that his practice in Albany only just sufficed to keep 
 the wolf from the door. 
 
 When, in 1829, my mother’s father (Moses Rogers, of 7 State St., New York) 
 died, and she came into a handsome income, it was with unspeakable satisfaction 
 that he dropped his law business, and retired finally from the Bar, to spend his 
 remaining years amid the delights of study, horticulture and congenial friends, 
 in the village of Geneva. Of this happiest period of his life, when he was freed 
 from all anxieties and worries, and lived entirely at his ease, he has given some 
 account, I think, in his own autobiographical sketch. 
 
 From the time of his own father’s death, the sentiment of personal religion 
 deepened in his mind. In his little “den ” (as he called it), in his Geneva home 
 —no larger than a pantry, he spent much time every day, in reading his Bible 
 and books of devotion (such as Baxter’s “Dying Thoughts”), and in prayer. 
 So true a gentleman, so high-minded and honorable a man, so humble and 
 devout a Christian, I have never elsewhere known. This is only a very scanty 
 and imperfect tribute to him. It is hard for me to content myself with it, but 
 if I went on, I should only expose myself to the suspicion of yielding to the 
 influence of filial partiality. 
 
 The circumstances under which he abruptly left college without graduating, 
 are, I believe, told by himself; of course he got no degree; and never had a 
 college diploma until, thirty years later, he went to enter his son at New Haven. 
 Perhaps the Faculty thought it was magnanimous in him, as it was, to place his 
 son at the college where he himself had suffered, as he thought, great injustice. 
 They would not be surpassed in generosity; and so, of their own motion, they 
 conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws; this, at a time when the honor 
 was sparingly conferred, was, no doubt, very gratifying to him. At present, 
 when honorary degrees are often obtained through solicitation and influence, 
 and conferred on small lawyers and politicians, they bring no distinction what¬ 
 
 ever. 
 
SAMUEL MILES IIOPKINS. 
 
 49 
 
 NOTES FURNISHED BY MRS. JOHN M. BRADFORD, 
 nee SARAH ELISABETH HOPKINS. 
 
 In compliance with a request of Dr. Strong, I add a few items to the account 
 already given, of my father. 
 
 For sixty years we have kept this memoir in our own family, and it seemed 
 at first almost like disobedience to his expressed injunction when, in response 
 to much urgent solicitation, we gave our consent to its publication. 
 
 My father desired that there should be no obituary notice of him, and noth¬ 
 ing upon his tombstone, but a simple text of Scripture ; but there were many 
 obituary notices—that written by Thurlow Weed closing with the words of 
 Hamlet: 
 
 “ He was a man, take him for all in all, 
 
 We shall not look upon his like again.” 
 
 During my eighteen years of intimate companionship with my father, I never 
 remember to have heard from him one impatient, fretful or complaining word, 
 or even an expression of indignation, except when some act of wrong or dishonor 
 came to his notice, and then (I say it with reverence), his denunciations re¬ 
 minded me of those of our Lord upon the “Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! ” 
 
 His charity, both in thought and action, was boundless; he gave every man the 
 benefit of the doubt, and his hand was ever ready to help young men in sup¬ 
 porting themselves, or to aid the straggling to make their way in the world. 
 
 He never would have made money by his profession, for he always took the 
 cases of the poor and helpless. Through all the years of our life in Albany, one 
 of the many cases upon which he was engaged was that of a family of children 
 cheated of their inheritance, which he was trying to secure for them. 
 
 Our home was an asylum for dependent relatives—young people who were 
 brought there to be educated, or older ones who were given positions in the 
 household, and also of distressed strangers, and foreigners, who came with let¬ 
 ters to my father—such as the exiled Greeks and Poles, some of whom found a 
 home with us for a long time. 
 
 My dear mother gladly welcomed my father’s relatives, and he as gladly gave 
 a home to hers, though this was not often necessary, nearly all of my mother’s 
 family being in prosperous circumstances; but our table was always a long one, 
 with a numerous company about it. 
 
 In removing from New York, with its gaieties and a large circle of friends and 
 relatives, to Geneseo, my parents with four children, governess, and servants, 
 set out by sloop to Albany, by carriage to Utica, and from there by springless 
 
50 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 wagons, travelling over rough roads with all the furniture of a large New York 
 house, for their destination. Piano, mirrors, pictures, and even the delicate 
 bell-shaped glass of the clock which vibrated under a touch of the fingers, were 
 transported safely to that distant home, inhabited as their friends imagined, by 
 savage tribes, and yet more savage beasts, and by my mother spoken of until 
 the end of her life as “the far west.” 
 
 Like Abraham, my father collected about him his flocks and herds and shep¬ 
 herds, and began life in a new country, and among strange people, and these 
 people were mostly Indians. 
 
 The new house was prepared in Utica, but the family lived in Geneseo for a 
 considerable time before they could move into it, and even then, as the doors 
 and windows had not arrived, the openings were covered by blankets, while at 
 night fires were kept burning about the house to frighten away the wolves. 
 
 In a beautiful wood, overlooking the fertile valley of the Genesee, the colon¬ 
 ial house was built. Panny Wright, the first woman’s rights advocate and 
 lecturer in this country, who happened to be travelling through that region in 
 1818, was met in the woods by my father and sister, and invited to the house. 
 In recording her impressions she calls it a “palatial residence,” but my recol¬ 
 lection of it as I visited the place years later, is, that it was a large comfortable 
 wooden house, white, with green blinds and broad piazzas, with winding ave¬ 
 nues leading to lodges at the two entrances, and only enough trees felled to 
 open views to the valley below. 
 
 Here the three younger children, and I, the youngest of them all, were born. 
 Our nearest neighbors were the Seneca Indians, and their dusky faces are among 
 my earliest recollections. Kinder, gentler, and more honest neighbors could 
 not be found, until white men brought them the “fire-water,” thus corrupting 
 and brutalizing them. 
 
 The great chief lied Jacket, nature’s gentleman and eloquent orator, suc¬ 
 cumbed to the passion for drink, and would lie in the woods for days and nights 
 with his jug beside him, stupefied with rum, and the common Indians, after this 
 passion for strong drink seized them, were ready to rob, or even to murder, for 
 money to purchase the “snik-ke-yi” (whiskey). 
 
 There were many interesting tales told of these red neighbors of ours, which 
 I have not space to set down here. They loved my father, who was always 
 kind and just to them, and they gave to him the name of “ shin-ne-wah-ne ’ 
 
 (the gentleman). 
 
 When I was four years of age, we removed to Albany, where my father 
 resumed the practice of the law. Here he was a member of the Legislature, as 
 he had previously been of Congress. At his “Legislature dinners” were always 
 
SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS. 
 
 51 
 
 to be seen Tliurlow Weed, Mr. Seward, and many other prominent and distin¬ 
 guished men, whose names I have not time to record. 
 
 I remember Daniel Webster, and the Chancellors and Chief Justices; 
 La Fayette, on his second visit to America, with whom my parents took break¬ 
 fast, and whom I was permitted to meet. The stately Governor Clinton walked 
 up the aisle of the Second Presbyterian Church one Sunday morning, with 
 Mrs. Clinton by his side as usual, and a procession of sons and daughters behind 
 them. With the Governor walked a dignified gentleman, who attracted general 
 attention,—this was the great Sir John Franklin, on his way for the second time 
 to the polar regions. 
 
 As we sat in the gloaming by our blazing wood fire in the winter evenings, a 
 silent figure would sometimes glide in, and after a few moments would as silently 
 steal away; this was Aaron Burr, despised by every one, but tolerated and kindly 
 treated by my father, because of benefits received from him when he was a strug¬ 
 gling young lawyer. 
 
 In 1832 it was decided that we should remove to Geneva, in order that my 
 father might spend his last days near his much-loved sister Mrs. Dwight. We 
 made the canal journey on board a new packet-boat chartered for the occasion, 
 the forerunner, though we dreamed it not, of the modern house-boat. This 
 was our home for a week; the cabin was a pleasant parlor, with piano, centre- 
 table, books, games and work; and it was an experience which we would 
 gladly have prolonged; but it was ended by our arrival at our pleasant home in 
 Geneva. Here my father spent five happy years, and here he sank peacefully 
 to his rest, in charity with all the world, and “in the sure and certain hope of a 
 glorious resurrection.” 
 
GENEALOGY OF THE HOPKINS FAMILY. 
 
 The Hopkins Family is said by some to have come from Staffordshire in 
 England. Others assign the town of Coventry in Warwickshire as its original 
 home. As Warwickshire and Staffordshire are contiguous counties, and the 
 stage-road from London to Liverpool traverses them both, and as family con¬ 
 nections may have stretched across the boundary line between them, both of 
 these stories may have their element of truth. At Coventry however we find 
 a Stephen Hopkins so early as 1609, and there, on certain old buildings, the 
 Hopkins crest is credibly related to exist to day. 
 
 Goodwin, in his “Plymouth Republic,” asserts that “Elder Brewster and his 
 son Edward in 1609 became members of the Virginia family just formed, and this 
 year Stephen Hopkins and his family, and other non-conformists sailed in the 
 fleet of Gates and Somers to relieve the colony at Jamestown, Virginia. He is 
 mentioned as lay-reader to Mr. Buck, chaplain of the expedition.” Yet some¬ 
 what later than this he signed his name with a cross, perhaps like Peregrine 
 White (born in the Mayflower, the first white child born in New England, 
 November 20, 1620, and died in 1704), “whoin youth used his pen in a forcible 
 manner, but in his last days made his mark in his will.” 
 
 The vessel destined for Virginia was shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda. 
 This shipwreck was not simply the means of discovering the island. It resulted 
 in returning to England in 1611 or 1612 a man designed by Providence to 
 become one of the most prominent of the Plymouth Pilgrims. 
 
 When the Plymouth Colony was projected, it was only natural that the same 
 love of adventure and of freedom which had led Stephen Hopkins to sail for 
 Virginia should lead him to sail for New England. His hardships in Bermuda 
 gave him an excellent preparation for colonizing the northern portion of our 
 western continent. At any rate he is the fourteenth in the list of the immortal 
 forty-one who in December, 1620, signed the compact in the cabin of the 
 Mayflower. 
 
 Stephen Hopkins was always called “Mister ” (= Master) though only twelve 
 persons in the list of the Mayflower passengers have this prefix to their names. 
 He was the constant companion of Miles Standish in his military expeditions, 
 and he was associated with Winslow in his embassy to Massassoit. It is said 
 that he was a dealer in leather. He was certainly in the beaver-trade with Mr. 
 John Atwood of Plymouth, which rendered possible his falling in with other 
 skins suitable for tanning purposes. 
 
 52 
 
GENEALOGY OF THE HOPKINS FAMILY. 
 
 53 
 
 Before he left England, Stephen Hopkins had two children, Giles and Con¬ 
 stanta, by a first wife, and at least one other named Damaris, by a second wife. 
 In Bradford’s “History of Plymouth Plantation” (pp. 448, 452), we find the 
 list of passengers in the Mayflower. Among them are “ Stephen Hopkins and 
 Elizabeth his wife, and two children, Giles and Constanta, both by a former 
 wife, and two more by this wife, called Damaris and Oceanus, the last born at 
 sea, and two servants, Edward Doty and Edward Litster.” It is plausibly 
 maintained that while Giles was the eldest son of Stephen by his first wife, 
 there was a second son John, also by the first wife, and that this John, left 
 behind in England on account of the second wife’s jealousy and coming himself 
 to Boston thirteen years after, is the ancestor of all our Hopkins tribe. 
 
 Certain it is that Elizabeth Hopkins exercised such influence over Stephen 
 that he made her son Caleb his heir, regardless of the rights of Giles, his 
 eldest son by the former wife. It is also curious to find that Giles’s first son 
 was named Stephen, and that his second son was named John. The names 
 Stephen and John indeed succeed each other continuously during the early 
 history of the family. What seems to be the record of Stephen’s second mar¬ 
 riage at St. Mary’s, Whitechapel, London, reads simply: “Stephen Hopkins 
 and Eliza Fisher, March, 1617.” The record of marriages at St. Mary 
 Le Strand, London, add other family names to the list: “November 23, 1612, 
 John Hopkins and Ann Tumber “February 15, 1616, Hugh Richardson and 
 Mary Hopkins.” The “John” here mentioned may possibly be the brother of 
 Stephen, from whom John of Hartford was named. The name Samuel is also 
 perpetuated in the subsequent history of the Hopkins family. And, lest all 
 these records from London churches should seem impertinent, we must remem¬ 
 ber that Bradford gives Stephen Hopkins as one of the Mayflower passengers 
 “from the London section.” 
 
 Thus an argument has been constructed to prove that the Hopkins race is 
 descended from Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower. We can trace our descent 
 with certainty to John Hopkins who came from England to Massachusetts with 
 the Reverend Thomas Hooker in 1633. It would be very pleasant to know 
 that this John Hopkins was the Mayflower Stephen’s son by the first mar¬ 
 riage, early deprived of his mother by her death and left behind in England 
 by his father thirteen years before. The age and name of the son, and the 
 name which the son in turn gave to his son, corroborate the surmise. Dr. 
 Samuel Hopkins of Newport, and President Mark Hopkins of Williams Col¬ 
 lege, although their biographers throw doubt upon this genealogy, both 
 inclined to the belief that Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower was their ances¬ 
 tor. Yet the first link of connection still remains somewhat hypothetical, and 
 
54 
 
 GENEALOGY OF THE HOPKINS FAMILY. 
 
 our descent from so distinguished a member of the original Plymouth Com¬ 
 pany cannot be considered as absolutely proved. 
 
 Samuel Miles Hopkins, in the sketch of his own life which follows, claims 
 that his ancestors were Puritans as far back as the days of Queen Elizabeth, 
 and he adds that they were uniformly honest men. We can at any rate pride 
 ourselves on our forefathers from the days of Joliu Hopkins down. As has 
 been already said, he came from England to Massachusetts with the Reverend 
 Thomas Hooker in 1633. In that same year he married a wife named Jane. 
 Some member of the family has seen a history in which was written in pencil- 
 mark, after the word “Jane,” the word “Strong,” making it possible that the 
 Strongs and the Hopkins foregathered even thus early. 
 
 John Hopkins was admitted freeman in Cambridge in 1634, the same year 
 that his son Stephen was born. When the Reverend Thomas Hooker became 
 a founder of the Connecticut Colony in 1636, John Hopkins apparently went 
 with him to Hartford. The records of that Colony at any rate make honorable 
 mention of him so early as 1639. He is called “juror” in that year, and 
 “townsman” in 1640. He was a miller, and was the partner of Governor 
 Edward Hopkins of Connecticut. He owned a farm south of Mill River, near 
 the site of the old Charter Oak, and he is commonly called “John Hopkins 
 of Hartford.” John Hopkins, born in England probably about 1613, died at 
 Hartford, Conn., in 1654, leaving two children, Stephen and Bethia. This 
 name Bethia, like Beth, Bertha, and Berthia, was perhaps one of the nicknames 
 for Elizabeth with which the age abounded, and it would be a singular' confir¬ 
 mation of relationship if John Hopkins of Hartford in a forgiving spirit named 
 his daughter Bethia after his stepmother, as he had named his son after his 
 father Stephen. 
 
 Stephen Hopkins of Hartford, in the second generation, was born in 1634; 
 was made freeman in 1651; married Dorcas Bronson, daughter of John Bron¬ 
 son of Farmington, who died May 10th, 1697. He had six children, John 
 Stephen, Ebenezer, Joseph, Dorcas, and Mary. He built the mill in Waterbury 
 in 1680, but gave it to his son John to run, he himself never leaving Hartford. 
 He died at Hartford, in October, 1689. 
 
 In the third generation, John Hopkins, eldest son of Stephen, was born in 
 1665. He married, in 1683, Hannah (Rogers?), who died May 30, 1730. He 
 was Sergeant Ensign and Deputy to the General Court for sixteen years. He 
 was “The Miller ” of Waterbury, where he had allotted to him twenty acres, and 
 also a home-lot, in consideration of his usefulness to the town as a miller. 
 Waterbury was at first called Salem. John Hopkins died November 4, 1732. 
 His children were John, Consider, Stephen, Timothy, Samuel, Mary, Hannah, 
 Dorcas—eight in all. 
 
GENEALOGY OF THE HOPKINS FAMILY. 
 
 55 
 
 In the fourth generation, Stephen Hopkins, fourth child of John, was born 
 November 19, 1689. He married Susannah Peck, of Wallingford, in 1717. He 
 lived at Waterbury, Conn., and died there January 4, 1769. His brother Joseph 
 was elected to the Legislature, half-yearly, for seventy successive times. His 
 younger brother Timothy (1691-1749) was the father of Dr. Samuel Hopkins 
 (1721-1803) the noted theologian of Newport, R. I.; and Samuel’s youngest 
 brother Mark was the father of Archibald Hopkins and the grandfather of 
 President Mark Hopkins of Williams College (1802-1887). 
 
 In the fifth generation, Stephen Hopkins, son of the preceding Stephen, was 
 born June 28, 1719. He married Dorothy Talmadge of Long Island for his 
 first wife, and she was the mother of his son Samuel. For his third wife he 
 married widow Ann Miles of Wallingford, the mother of Samuel’s wife Mary. 
 Stephen Hopkins died at Waterbury in 1796. 
 
 In the sixth generation, Samuel Hopkins was born November 10, 1748. He 
 removed from Waterbury, then called Salem, to Goshen, Conn., in 1774, and 
 there spent most of his days. In 1771, he married, as we have already seen, 
 Mary Miles, a daughter of his stepmother, his father’s third wife. Mary Miles 
 Hopkins was born October 9, 1753, and died September 19, 1811. Samuel was 
 thirteen times elected Representative in the Connecticut General Assembly. 
 He was a man of large reading, of literary tastes, but especially of theological 
 acumen. He was the elder brother of Dr. Lemuel Hopkins the poet, who was 
 born at Waterbury in 1750, and died at Hartford in 1801. 
 
 Samuel Hopkins served as a soldier in the War of the Revolution. In the 
 year 1776 he enlisted at Winchester and marched to the defense of New York. 
 Samuel Miles Hopkins, in the memoir to which this genealogical account is an 
 introduction, says: “I remember my father being absent with the militia who 
 marched to the defense of New York in 1776.” The Hopkins family has been 
 more noted for its achievements in literary than in military affairs, yet at least 
 one member of the family risked something as a soldier in the War of Inde¬ 
 pendence. It may also be remembered that one of the great-grandsons of 
 Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower wrote “Stephen Hopkins,” with a weak 
 hand but a stout heart, beneath the Declaration of Independence, while the 
 signer’s brother was Ezekiel Hopkins, the first Admiral of the American Navy, 
 and the equal in rank with Washington himself. 
 
 In 1809, with his son Mark, Deacon Jesse Stanley and others, Samuel Hop¬ 
 kins removed from Goshen, Conn., to Mount Morris, N. Y., and he died at 
 Mt. Morris, March 19, 1818. He had six children, Samuel Miles Hopkins, born 
 May 9,1772, died October 8,1837; Polly Hopkins, born October 16, 1775, died 
 August 17, 1872; Mark Hopkins, born March 9,1778, died May 22, 1832; Susan 
 
56 
 
 GENEALOGY OF THE HOPKINS FAMILY. 
 
 Miles Hopkins, born Marcli 22, 1782, died August 30, 1860; Fraderick Miles 
 Hopkins, born January 22, 1791, died February 20, 1879; Dudley Hopkins, 
 died in infancy, 1794. 
 
 In the seventh generation, Samuel Miles Hopkins, the author of the autobio¬ 
 graphical sketch which follows, was born, as has been said, May 9, 1772. In 
 1800 he married Sarah Elizabeth Rogers of New York City. His children were 
 seven: Mary Elizabeth Hopkins (Mrs. William Gordon YerPlanck), born April 
 13, 1802, died February 28, 1857; William Rogers Hopkins, born January 2, 
 1805, died November 12,1876; Julia Anne Hopkins (Mrs. William E. Sill) born 
 February 22, 1807, died March 5, 1849; Hester Rogers Hopkins (Mrs. Charles 
 A. Rose), born November 5, 1808, died October 8, 1845; Samuel Miles Hop¬ 
 kins, D. D., born August 8, 1813, for many years Professor in the Auburn 
 Theological Seminary; Woolsey Rogers Hopkins, born July 14, 1815; Sarah 
 Elizabeth Hopkins (Mrs. John M. Bradford), born August 20, 1818. 
 
ANCESTRY OF SAMUEL MILES HOPKINS, SUMMARIZED, 
 
 
 
 1633 
 
 
 1st Generation - 
 
 - John Hopkins 
 
 — 
 
 
 Jane (Strong ?) 
 
 
 of Hartford 
 
 
 
 of Boston (?) 
 
 
 1613 (?)-1654-41 
 
 
 
 died (?) 
 
 
 two children 
 
 
 
 two children 
 
 
 
 1664 (?) 
 
 2nd Generation - 
 
 - Stephen Hopkins 
 
 = 
 
 = 
 
 Dorcas Bronson 
 
 
 of Hartford 
 
 
 
 of Farmington 
 
 
 1634-1689-55 
 
 
 
 died 1697-57 (?) 
 
 
 six children 
 
 
 
 six children 
 
 
 
 1683 
 
 
 3rd Generation - 
 
 - John Hopkins 
 
 
 — 
 
 Hannah (Rogers ?) 
 
 
 of Waterbury 
 
 
 
 of Waterbury 
 
 
 1665-1732-67 
 
 
 
 died 1730-70 (?) 
 
 
 eight children 
 
 
 
 eight children 
 
 
 1 
 
 1717 
 
 
 4th Generation - 
 
 - Stephen Hopkins 
 
 
 = 
 
 Susannah Peck 
 
 
 of Waterbury 
 
 
 
 of Wallingford 
 
 
 1689-1769-80 
 
 
 
 died 1755-75 
 
 
 six children 
 
 
 
 six children 
 
 5th Generation 
 
 6th Generation 
 
 7th Generation 
 
 1747 
 
 Stephen Hopkins 
 of Waterbury 
 1719-1796-77 
 six children 
 
 1771 
 
 Samuel Hopkins = 
 
 of Goshen 
 1748-1818-70 
 six children 
 
 1800 
 
 Samuel Miles Hopkins 
 born May 9, 1772 
 died Oct. 8, 1837 
 seven children 
 
 Dorthy Talmadge 
 
 of Long Island,1st wife 
 died 1761-35 (?) 
 five children 
 
 Mary Miles 
 
 of Wallingford 
 died 1811-58 
 six children 
 
 Sarah Elisabeth Rogers 
 born Feb. 1, 1778 
 died Dec. 17, 1866 
 seven children 
 

 ’ 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Library Bureau Cat no. 1137