Ancestors

John Alexander Hopkins

John Alexander Hopkins was born in 1833 in Perry County, Alabama. His parents were Lambeth Hopkins and Susan Adcock. The 1850 census found him at seventeen in their household in Perry County. The census taker wrote his father's name as "Elizabeth" and his mother's as "Sarah," but the children and the Maddox son-in-law are Lambeth's family.

He was converted in 1850 and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the Methodist church of the southern states. On 17 November 1857, in Perry County, he married Rosanna Emiline Canon, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Malcolm D. Canon, a planter of the county. Their first child, Nancy, was born the next year.

He fought for the Confederacy. His daughter Susan, remembering in 1949, said he was wounded at Lookout Mountain, the battle above Chattanooga in November 1863. Rosanna went to Atlanta to nurse him.

He and Rosanna had thirteen children between 1858 and 1883. In November 1875 they left Alabama for Texas by wagon. They reached a farm in Tyler County owned by Rosanna's father on 22 December 1875. About 1877 or 1878 they moved to the Moscow community in Polk County. The 1880 census found them there, in Justice Precinct 3, with seven children at home.

His faith grew stronger with age. In August 1894, his obituary says, "he was gloriously sanctified." In February 1896 he left the southern Methodist church and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, the northern body. By then he lived at Chester, in Tyler County.

He died at Chester on 12 February 1897. He was about 63. He was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery there. His daughter Lizzie was buried in the same cemetery three years later, and Rosanna in 1917. A flat marker now covers the family: "John A. Hopkins 1833 - 1897 and Emeline Canon Hopkins 1840 - 1917 and some of their descendants."

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Cite: Heirology, "John Alexander Hopkins (1833-1897)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-alexander-hopkins-1833-1897-9463c3.