On a Possible Line of Descent of Jesse Hopkins of Georgia (born 1785±9)

According to Ancestry.Com, a certain individual showed up as a 3rd to 4th cousin in terms of shared dna with my older brother whose family tree I am working on. I checked the publicly available family tree of this presumed 3rd cousin and realized that she was probably related to my brother and me through our great great grandmother, Mahala Hopkins. I did about 20 hours of research over a several day period, comparing census records and other government generated records with autosomal and mitochondrial dna test results and was able to reconstruct a possible family relationship to use for further testing which tied us to a common ancestor in the person of Jesse Hopkins, who was born toward the end of the 18th century and who lived in Georgia. Upon further testing, however, I realized that this person's Hopkins ancestry was quite different from that of my brother and myself. As the ancestry of Mahala Hopkins deserves its own posting, I would like to discuss Jesse Hopkins and one line of possible descent from him.

The reconstruction based on the results of my original research were as follows:

Generation 1. Jessee Hopkins, to use the spelling found in the 1820 census, was born between 1776 and 1794 (1785±9), and seems to have married in 1807 to a woman by the name of Judanna Williams. She seems to have been born between 1791 to 1794. Her parentage is still unknown. Jessee and his wife seem to have had a second son William in Georgia around 1810. Unfortunately, the 1810 census for Georgia is missing; but, as Jessee does not appear in the Georgia 1812 tax list, it is unlikely he and his wife had fully established themselves by then, being involved in trade and small scale manufacturing, rather than in farming. In the 1810s they had yet another son and a daughter (names unknown). Jesse was engaged in manufacturing and had one slave in 1820. His son William eventually moved to Alabama where he had several children before moving to Mississippi. Concerning this generation and the next, however, one should remain aware that the identification of William as a son of Jesse and Judanna is based on the fact that they conveniently fit with regard to the 1820 census, a census which does not give the names of children, only rough ages. No doubt there are other possibilities, too, which I might have overlooked.

Generation 2. William, the presumed second son of Jesse, who would have been born right about 1810, married a woman by the name of Sarah. Her family name has, so far, resisted discovery. The 1860 census indicates a possible birth year of 1832 and that her place of birth was Alabama. Sarah and William would have married by 1847, at the latest, if the birth years given to the census taker are accurate and if they married before having children. Neither individual was literate, nor were their children. They would have moved to Clarke County, Mississippi after the birth of their fourth child (and third son) James in Alabama in 1853. Their oldest son Z. T. was born in 1848, William C. their second son in 1850, and their daughter Sarah in 1852. William and Sarah seem to be missing in the 1870 census, but appear in the Mississippi state census of 1866 which indicates that Sarah had already died. Her final surviving child a son (the 1866 census does not provide names) would have been born between 1860 and 1866 (1863±3). Presumably, if they survived the Civil War, Z. T. had become a laborer and his sister Sarah had gotten married. William C. and James were still living with his father. Two individuals of the right age to be William Sr.'s mother-in-law and father-in-law were living with him.

Generation 3. William C. Hopkins, the son of William Hopkins the elder and Sarah had little interest in his origins. He gives his birth place as Mississippi in the 1880 and 1910 censuses, but as Alabama in the 1900 census. Likewise, he gives his mother and father's birth places as being Mississippi in 1880 and 1910, but as Alabama in 1910. He gives his year of birth as 1854 in 1880, as August 1850 in 1900, and as 1845 in 1910. His wife, Sarah C. Duvall (married 16 February 1871) shows less variation in her year of birth than her husband, being 1855 in the 1880 census, 1853 in 1900, and 1854 in 1910. They had 11 children, all of whom were still alive in 1910. Though William C. Hopkins and Sarah Duvall were both illiterate, they seem to have understood the value of education. All their children were able to read and write. A fairly careful search did not reveal William C. Hopkins in the 1920 census, but there is a William C. Hopkins born in 1850 appearing in an index of California deaths for 1917.