Notes

Note H5 Index

Anna Maria was born in Bavaria, the
daughter of John and Eva (Frederick) Roth. The Roths emigrated
in 1854 aboard the Ship Manchester from Havre to New Orleans,
settling near Lanesville in Harrison County, Indiana.

After John's death in the early 1860's Eva married Francis Bollinger.

Notes

Note H6 Index

Conflicting U S Census data presents questions as toConflicting U S Census data presents questions as to
where Hiram Hopper was born, although most sources
indicate that he was born somewhere in New York state.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that Hiram first
shows up in Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati) at
about the same time that a large contingent of Hoppers,
originally from the New York/New Jersey area, were also
establishing residences and businesses there. However,
no connection to these Hoppers can be established.

Although Hiram and Eliza Ann were married in Floyd County,
Indiana in 1835, they returned to Hamilton County,
Ohio (Cincinnati) and began to raise their family.
Hiram was a bricklayer at that time. At some point between
1850 and 1853 the Hoppers returned permanently to Floyd
County where they took up farming in Greenville Township.
According to his obituary in the NEW ALBANY LEDGER in
August 1890 he had served two terms as a County Commissioner

Highram was widowed twice, only his third wife outlived him.
He and all three wives are buried together at St. Mary?s
Catholic Church in Greenville, Floyd County, Indiana

*Highram's son, Hiram Hopper Jr. served in the Union Army in
the Civil War as a private in G Company, 19th Ohio Infantry
during the last few months of the Civil War. The Unit served
in General Sherman's Army in the later stages of the war,
participating in the Battles of Shiloh, Atlanta and Nashville.
Hiram Jr. would have only participated in the last battle.

His farm was directly across the road from the cemetery he was
buried in, but it now has a few nice, modern homes and scattered
small businesses on it.

NOTES by John Ott 9/17/2002:

During the four years that I have been researching the history of my family, one
persistent mystery that I faced was
finding the roots of the Hopper family.
Perhaps it was the admiration and respect that I have for my paternal grandmother, Susie Hopper Ott, or perhaps it was because every tidbit that I was able to find piqued my interest in this family even more. The name Hiram Hopper stood out
Hiram Hopper ca 1880 among all of my ancestors as a pillar of "Ol' Red Brick" Hopper
pride and mystery, a man who I always home in Greenville, Indiana
wish I can have known and talked to. He was the grandfather of my grandmother, but because of family circumstances, he probably never knew her.

During my early research I quickly learned that Hiram Hopper was born in 1812 somewhere in New York (state), and that he was a bricklayer in Cincinnati, Ohio, before he brought his family to the small town of Greenville (Floyd County), Indiana. The first documentation of these facts were from notes written by Grandmother Susie. The information was quickly and easily verified using census data and marriage records. I learned early that he married Eliza Ann Whitlock in Floyd County in 1835, then returned to Cincinnati to begin his family. He remained there until after 1850, according to census data. But by 1854 he had left Cincinnati and was living in Greenville, where his young wife Eliza died. He already had six children with Eliza before she died.

In 1856, Hiram married a young widow named Sarah (Walts) Moser, who had three children from her first marriage. He had two more children with Sarah. In 1860, Sarah died, leaving Hiram with ten children to care for (Hiram and Eliza's oldest son, Levingston Hopper, had grown and remained in Ohio when Hiram and Eliza left for Indiana). The following year he married a recent widow and neighbor, Catherine (Devore) Brown. Catherine brought to this union five children from her first marriage, and he and Catherine had five more children together.

About 1878, Hiram was struck by an unknown illness that, according to his obituary, left him paralyzed the last twelve years of his life. He died in Greenville on August 22, 1890. Catherine Hopper lived until 1902.

Until early this year, I was pessimistic about ever learning any more about my Hopper ancestry. There were several reasons for this. First, I had not found anyone else who had researched this family in detail, so there was no one with whom I could exchange data regarding Hiram's years in Ohio. Secondly, because of at least two courthouse fires, official records in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) were almost non-existant before 1850. Basically, the only available resource was the U.S. Census data for pre-1850 Hamilton Co.

The census data did, however, lead to some very interesting questions for me. If Hiram did get married in 1835 and began having children in Cincinnati before 1840, why did he not appear in the 1840 census? Who were the several other Hoppers who appeared in 1840 and later censuses who, like Hiram, were born in New York and were all either bricklayers or chairmakers? Finally, was Hiram in any way connected to another group of Hoppers who came from New Jersey to Hamilton County in the early 1800s? These other Hoppers were three brothers named Abraham, Aaron, and Garret Hopper. They were engaged in agricultural pursuits, establishing a very successful fruit farm and business in rural Anderson Township. It did not seem that these farming people would be related to the city-oriented bricklayers and chairmakers in Cincinnati. Nevertheless, I began looking into these other Hoppers. With the help of Maria ("Ree") Pratt-Hopper, I found that the three brothers descended from a very large contingent of Hoppers that had settled in the early 1600s in New Amsterdam, which later became New York and part of New Jersey. By the late 1700s there were several hundred Hoppers living in Bergen County, New Jersey, Rockland County, New York, and New York City. Even better, they were all very loyal members of the Reformed Dutch Church. The various congregations of this church were very meticulous about keeping records as well as eventually sharing them with the genealogy group in the Mormon Church. So I began refocusing my research efforts on the New York/New Jersey area, knowing that if Hiram had been born there, I might find something about his birth.

At the Denver Public Library I came across some books on New Jersey history, and on more than one occasion I came across a story about Captain Jonathan Hopper, of the Bergen County Militia, who had been murdered in his home in 1779. According to these stories, the murder took place in front of his wife and children, and that it was done by Tories who were loyal to the King of England during the Revolutionary War. Several of the stories mentioned Jonathan's son Albert, who, according to Church Records, had been born in Bergen County in 1776. Some of the historical accounts of the murder also stated that "?it is said that Jonathan's offspring eventually moved to Cincinnati." Ree Hopper also had accounts of this story included in her genealogical work. Jonathan Hopper was also a second or third cousin of the father of the three brothers who later migrated to Hamilton County and settled in Anderson Township.

Armed with this information, I searched the census records in New York, and found just one Albert Hopper in New York whose age agreed with the 1776 birth date of Jonathan Hopper's son. This Albert Hopper lived in New York City's 5th Ward in 1810. By 1820 he was no longer in New York. But the 1830 census for Cincinnati has an Albert Hopper whose age again matches the 1776 birth date, and whose children's ages coincide with the birthdates found in census pages of later years for the several bricklayers and chairmakers named Hopper. Then, in the 1840 census for Cincinnati, Albert again is shown as head of household in his sixties, widowed, with a younger couple living in the same household (names of wives and children are not shown before the 1850 census) with two infant children, all of whom match exactly the ages of Hiram, Eliza Ann, and their first two children. I reasoned that this could explain why Hiram Hopper did not appear in the 1840 census in either Hamilton County, Ohio, or in Floyd County, Indiana.

I was recently informed by a fellow researcher that there was a website on the internet listing burials at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. When I accessed the listings, I found that there were three of the men included there who I had earlier suspected were brothers of Hiram. Included were Adonijah Hopper (chairmaker), 1815 to 1870; Samuel Hopper (chairmaker), 1804-1868 and born in New York City; and William Hopper (bricklayer), 1821 to 1892, born in Cincinnati. All of the listings except William's stated that the parents were Albert and Martha Hopper. William's listing only included his father Albert.

I also discovered on the internet copies of the Cincinnati City Directories for 1825 and 1840. The 1825 directory list an Albert Hopper, grocer, with an address of Western Row and Longworth Streets. It also stated that he was from New York. The 1840 directory shows Albert and Hiram Hopper living together at the same Western Row and Longworth address. This confirmed my suspicion that indeed Hiram was living in the same household as Albert as the 1840 census indicated. The directory also showed that Adonijah Hopper lived very close by.

I recently received a letter from the New York City Official Archives which stated that civil birth records were not kept in the early 1800s, and it would therefore be impossible to verify Hiram's birth and parentage. The marriage certificate of his union with Eliza Ann did not provide his parents' names either. The last hope of finding documentation regarding his birth lies in the records of the Reformed Dutch Church. I am currently awaiting a reply from the Church Archivist regarding the availability of records for New York City in the early 1800s.

With all of these facts and circumstantial evidence in mind, I am going "out-on-a-limb" to show the following history for our Hopper family. To the genealogical purist, the absence of a birth certificate for Hiram should prevent me from doing it. The information regarding the earlier ancestors were gleaned from several different sources but, for the most part, were verified in the records of the Reformed Dutch Church in Bergen County, NJ. Spellings of family names vary from source to source, so the most commonly used are shown here. It can be seen that in the 1600s and 1700s, the traditional Dutch naming system was used. For example, the name "Jan Hendrikse" means Jan (the Dutch form of John), the son of Hendrick (Henry).