Joshua Hopkins

Hopkins, Joshua (1738-1798) was a deacon in the Baptist church at Alcester, a town about 20 miles south of Birmingham, near Ragley.  According to the Universal British Directory for 1798, he was listed as a grocer and chandler and a freeman (vol. 2, p. 15).  A tablet in the church erected in his honor after his death notes that he was a deacon for nearly 30 years.  It also notes that his first wife, Anna, died in July 1782, aged 40 (see Jacqui Snowdon, The Alcester Baptist Story 1640-1990 [Alcester, 1990], 21).  The following obituary on Hopkins appeared in the Evangelical Magazine vol. 7 (1799), written by Samuel Pearce:

August 13, died, Mr. Joshua Hopkins, of Alcester, who had been deacon of the Baptist Chburch in that town, for nearly 30 years; during which time he manifested unabating concern for the interests of real religion in general, and among the society to which he belonged in particular.  Several vicissitudes in the affairs of this church he painfully felt; but at length the prudent and liberal measures, which, at his recommendation were adopted, have issued, under the divine blessing, in a joyful union of the church to their present pastor, Mr. J[ohn]. Smith; under whose ministry it has received additions before unknown within the same space of time.  The prosperity of Zion inspired Mr. H. wiith lively pelasures in his dying hours; yet, strong as his attachments were to his Christian friends on earth, he was made willing chearfuly to leave them for more perfect society in heaven; and before his death, he conversed on his removal as of that of a stranger to his home; where he expected to join the society of several friends whom he mentioned, who had departed in the Lord.

     His last illness was protracted; his sufferings great; and occasionally his mind underwent some conflicts to which few real Christians are strangers; but in the main, his evidences of adoption were clear, and his confidence in the promises strong.  After expressing his hope, that “the Lord would not forsake him in his dying moments, and that all would be well at last,” he slept in Jesus in the 61st year of his age, leaving his family and friends in possession of all the comfort which the assurance of his eternal felicity could impart, to soften their distress, and support them under a loss so deeply and so widely felt.  He left behind him a widow (eldest daughter of the late Dr. Ash) and eight children, one of whom is the wife of Mr. Pearce, Baptist Minister, Birmingham. Some of these are treading---O that all may tread!---in he steps of their pious Father!  (p. 34)

S. Pearce Carey in his Samuel Pearce M.A., the Baptist Brainerd (1913), states that Anna, Hopkins’s first wife, was the oldest daughter of John Ash, Baptist minister at Pershore and a well-known lexicographer and grammarian, but this is simply not true (p. 119) [Others have continued this error -- see Arthur S. Langley, Birmingham Baptists Past and Present (London: Kingsgate, 1939), p. 34].  Joshua Hopkins’s daughter was Sarah Hopkins (1771-1804).  It was his second wife, Elizabeth (b. c. 1753) (see her entry under "Ash"), who was the eldest daughter of John Ash, Baptist minister at Pershore from 1751 to 1779. Ash married Elizabeth Goddard in 1751 and had six children: Eliza, Samuel, Joseph, Martha, Sarah and Luezar (see G. H. Taylor, “The Reverend John Ash, LL.D. 1724-1779, Baptist Quarterly 20 [1963-64], 8). Joseph Ash, Eliza’s younger brother, lived in Birmingham in the early 1790s before moving to Bristol in 1795-96, where he became a member and deacon at Broadmead for many years.  Eliza Ash married Joshua Hopkins probably in late 1789 or early 1790, for the Alcester Church Book records the following entry: “Mrs Eliza Hopkins received by letter from the Baptist Church at Pershore April 10th 1790.” Her presence in Alcester may have been the reason for her brother, Joseph Ash, later of Bristol, being in Birmingham in the early 1790s.  The Church Book later notes, “Removed by death . . . Eliz Hopkins March 1794.” But whether this is Eliza Hopkins, Joshua's second wife, or a child born to his second wife who died young, or a daughter from his first marriage is unclear. Another entry in the church book under a “List of Members 7th Jan 1795” is headed by Joshua Hopkins and followed by “Eliza Hopkins (now Hemming) 1803.”  An Eliza Hopkins had been received into membership prior to his marriage to Eliza Ash, so most likely it was that Eliza, most likely his daughter and sister of Sarah Hopkins Pearce, who died in 1794. Eliza Ash Hopkins appears to have survived her husband's death, for Samuel Pearce's obituary (cited above) clearly notes that his second wife survived him. This may be the source that S. Pearce Carey used to create the erroneous attribution to Sarah Pearce being the child of Elizabeth Ash, not Anna Hopkins, of Pearce's closing line is somewhat misleading. Nevertheless, it appears that Elizabeth Ash Hopkins is the one who married a Mr. Hemming[s] in 1803 (the Hemmings were a prominent Baptist family in the congregation of Maze Pond, Southwark, and were also a leading Baptist family in Kimbolten). Sarah Hopkins married Samuel Pearce on Tuesday, 2 February 1791. Their son, William Hopkins Pearce, served in India as a missionary, and their daughter, Ann, married Jonathan Carey, youngest son of the missionary, and lived in Calcutta.