Thomas Benton Hopkins
Thomas Benton Hopkins was born in Missouri on 15 May 1841. His parents were both born in Kentucky. He grew up in Cedar County, in the hill country of south-west Missouri, where the census found him as a boy in 1850 and in Washington Township in 1860.
In the Civil War he served in Company A of the 15th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry, a Union regiment that spent the war chasing guerrillas and raiders across southern Missouri. On 12 September 1861 he married Martha Simrell in Cedar County. Their children included Mary Matilda, born in 1862, Thomas Smith in 1869 and John Samuel in 1871. Martha died in 1873.
About 1875 he married again, by family accounts to Nancy Simrell, born in 1844. In 1880 he was farming in Washington Township, Cedar County, with his wife N., 36, and the children M. A., 16, M. M., 13, T. S., 11, J. S., 8, J. H., 4, and A. M., 2. His son William Benton was born in Cedar County on 24 January 1883, with his father's middle name. Nancy died in 1892, and in March 1893 Thomas married a third time, to Sudie Masters Simrell.
In 1900 he was 59 and farming in Washington Township with his sons Albert M., 23, and William B., 17, and a young man named Allen Craig. He died on 24 October 1906 and was buried in Old Union Cemetery at Caplinger Mills, near the Sac River. His stone reads THOMAS B. HOPKINS, BORN MAY 15, 1841, DIED OCT. 24, 1906, CO. A 15TH MO. VOL. CAV., with the line "Gone but not forgotten".
His memorial names his parents as Hugh S. Hopkins and Mary Kennedy.
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Cite: Heirology, "Thomas Benton Hopkins (1841-1906)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/thomas-benton-hopkins-1841-1906-ea209b.