OUR RELIGIOUS ANCESTRY: HOW WE BECAME LATTER-DAY SAINTS
Our Hoopes ancestors came from England. The earliest written record, from about 1375, which exists with anything near our Hoopes surname, is for the name Hooper, which was a Norman-French name for a cloth merchant. At this time nearly all the people living in France and England were Roman Catholic, so we can presume that our ancestors were Catholic, whatever their surname.
In 1533, King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife, which was forbidden by the Roman Catholic Pope, so Henry claimed authority for himself and a Protestant Church, the Church of England was born. Henry's son, Edward VI became the next king in and passed many laws which strengthened the Church of England. However, Edward's half-sister, Mary, followed him as queen and she tried to restore England to the Catholic Church. So severe were her laws against heresy or disbelief in Catholic doctrine that she became known as "Bloody Mary." She put to death more than 300 persons, among them Bishop John Hooper. While the similarity of the surnames between the martyr John Hooper may be only coincidental, the widespread religious persecution and upheavel of the time was something that could not be ignored.
When we trace our direct ancestry back as far as we can, we find the surname Howpe for an ancestor who died in 1570. During his lifetime "Bloody Mary" was on the throne and perhaps he changed the spelling of his surname from Hooper or Hoopes to avoid religious persecution. His son's surname was spelled Hoope, but his grandson, our direct grandfather, spelled his name Hoopes. This was Robert Hoopes. Our earliest ancestors, without doubt, faced religious persecution living in these times in England.
Robert Hoopes was christened in the parish church at Skelton-in-Cleveland, in the county of York, on 8 July 1875. The ordinance was performed by a minister of the Church of England, or the Anglican Church as it is also called.
For several generations our Hoopes ancestors lived in a great stone house, which is still standing, at Great Moorsholm and attended the parish church at Skelton-in-Cleveland, which is also still in existence. (The parish records have been microfilmed and are available at LDS Family History Centers worldwide.)
Robert's great grandson, Joshua Hoopes, was married in the parish church at Skelton, to Ann, our grandmother, but she died after giving birth to his four children-although we don't know the date of her death. Joshua married a second wife, Isabel, in 1679, which was also recorded by the Anglican priest.
However, two years before Joshua's marriage to Isabel, in 1677, there is a record stating that "Tobias Hoope, of Skelton, was fined 20 pounds for suffering a Meeting at his House, and 10 shillings for himself and wife being there...for being in the same Meeting, Joshua Hoope (a mis-spelling of our ancestor's name), for himself and Wife, was fined 10 shillings, but being no Quaker, paid down the Money." This is found in the book, Suffering of the Quakers, by Besse.
Beginning in 1647, an Englishman, George Fox, believed that God speaks to men and women-this woman thing was a novel idea, through the Holy Ghost and they didn't need the authority of the state church, because they knew it didn't have any authority from God. When Fox was taken before a magistrate to be prosecuted for his strange beliefs, he quoted a scripture that says that men will "quake" before God. The magistrate mockingly called him a Quaker, and we still know these modest, God-fearing people by this nick name.
From 1683, King Charles II, reigned in England and those whose form of worship did not conform to the prescribed teachings of the Church of England were harshly persecuted. This was also a very difficult time to live in England.
In spite of religious persecution, shortly after his marriage to Isabel, Joshua and his family joined with the Quakers. They were part of the Rowsby Monthly Meeting of Friends, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, for on the 4th day of the 3rd month (May), 1683, Joshua obtained a certificate of good standing from that body.
(Quakers have meetings on Sunday and during the week in member's homes or in small meeting houses, and then have a Monthly Meeting with larger groups, much like LDS wards come together with the stake. Quakers also believe that March is the first month of the year).
To escape religious persecution in the new world, Joshua, his new wife Isabel, and their three living children, aged, 11, 8 and 5, decided to leave their ancestral home in Yorkshire and sail on the last of William Penn's ships, "The Providence" for America. This would have been scary, as they knew little about America or what lay ahead of them.
Upon reaching America later in 1683 and being settled on land obtained from Penn, Joshua Hoopes deposited his certificate from the English Quaker church with the Middletown Monthly Meeting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. This Meeting recorded their acceptance, which was signed by 31 Friends, both men and women, which included two with Hoops surnames. Joshua later served as an Elder of the Middletown Meeting from 1714 to 1722.
Joshua's son, Daniel, who was eleven when he landed in America, later settled in Chester County, where he built a large stone house, which they named "Brooznoll" (which means breezy knoll, after Daniel's wife, Jane Worrilow's home in England) and were active in their local Quaker Meeting.
It was while living in Brooznoll that they saw General George Washington's Continental Army trudge down the nearby road to Philadelphia, after losing the Battle of Brandywine, which is just a few miles from Brooznoll. As Quakers, they didn't believe in fighting, so they didn't join the Army, but our grandfathers faithfully served in the Pennsylvania legislature, as justices of the peace, and in their Quaker Meetings. They became very prominent in Pennsylvania.
After almost 200 years at Brooznoll, with good farmland and material blessings, Daniel's 3rd great grandson, Jonathan Hoopes, decided to take his wife, Rebecca Watts, and family of 12 children, he was 56 at the time, leave all of this and move out west to Ohio, which was on the frontier of America. They left their comfortable Brooznoll for a log house they had to erect themselves. Jonathan and Rebecca took with them a certificate of good standing from their Quaker Meeting in Pennsylvania, leaving everything else for God only knew what.
But it was out in Ohio, in 1834, that Grandfather Jonathan first heard the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ from Mormon missionaries. He would not have heard it in his Pennsylvania Quaker stronghold-this is what God knew that he didn't. When Jonathan heard the Gospel in its fullness, he knew it was true and joined with those peculiar Mormons.
With his large family, Jonathan moved with the Saints and suffered much persecution in Ohio and Missouri. When asked by the Prophet Joseph, Jonathan wrote his "redress petition," documenting his persecution by the anti-Mormon mobbers. Jonathan and Rebecca eventually owned a fine home in Nauvoo, where he and grandmother were endowed in the Nauvoo Temple on the same day that some Saints were crossing the nearby Mississippi on ice. The Hoopes' also fled Nauvoo and after a few years in Iowa, came to Zion in the Rocky Mountains. Here Brother Brigham called them to settle up north in Cache County, as he called the northern most part the Mormon settlements.
This old former Quaker grandfather, who was a stonemason by trade, died at the age of 79, true to the Restored Faith, at Weston, which is now in Franklin County, Idaho.
Jonathan's son, Jonathan, Jr., settled Bennington, in Bear Lake County, where his son, our great grandfather, George Arthur, was born and raised. George Arthur's mother, Mary Ann Baldwin, was a grand daughter of Caleb Baldwin, a close personal friend of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Jonathan eventually moved his family to Arizona, where he went into old Mexico, serving as a body guard to LDS Apostles, who were looking for a place to escape their religious persecutions.
George Arthur, with a wife and small children at home in Thatcher, Arizona, left to serve a full-time mission to the Midwestern States, as was common at that time.
George Arthur later served as a counselor in the Bishopric in Thatcher for many years and in that capacity baptized eight year old Spencer Woolley (the Woolley's also descended from Daniel Hoopes) Kimball, who later became the Lord's Prophet.
George's oldest son, Grover, married a Lamoreaux girl from Dingle, Nora Estelle, in Bear Lake County, Idaho, a daughter of faithful Mormon pioneers.
Both Grover and Nora served full-time missions. Grover to the Northwestern States during the First World War, and Nora to the Midwestern States. Their eldest son, Grover Lamro, also served a full-time mission, to the Southern States before the Second World War.
When we look at our own pedigree chart, eyeing the generation that lived during the early days of the Restoration of the Gospel, we see that all of our ancestors accepted the Gospel during those trying times. They were all Mormon Pioneers, crossing the plains and settling the West. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our ancestors for the rich heritage they have left us. We can best show our gratitude by remaining faithful to our Mormon religion.