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Samuel Hopper was born about 1772 in North Carolina (purportedly in modern-day Caswell County) and died before December 1857 in Rabun Co., GA. He was reportedly the son of Thomas Hopper and Nancy Stewart. Various accounts give his paternal grandparents as Thomas Hopper and Anna Elizabeth Freeman of Caswell Co., NC, but this appears to be untrue. Another possibility for Samuel’s grandparents is William Deacon Hopper and Mary Ann Wright [source 1]. I recently took a trip to the Georgia State Archives in Morrow, GA (June 30, 2007) and looked for information on the Hoppers in Georgia, specifically the above-named parents of Rabun County's Samuel Hopper. I have not found a link between the Hoppers in other areas of Georgia and, in fact, what I found led me to believe that "our" Samuel was not related directly to the other Georgia Hoppers. I will post more information as I find it.
On March 24, 1801 in Caswell Co., NC, a Samuel Hopper married Elizabeth Murphey [source 2]. This marriage is supposed to refer to "our" Samuel Hopper, but I have not yet verified the link. Traditionally, Elizabeth died not long after the marriage took place and all of Samuel’s children were by his second wife, Sarah McKinney. Another researcher, Stacey Murphy Wilner, recently told me that she believes Samuel and Elizabeth were divorced in Claiborne Co., TN, before Samuel moved the family to Giles Co., TN.
I cannot verify the number of wives Samuel had at this time; I can only ascertain that Sarah McKinney was the mother of at least one of his children, as proven by Goodspeed's Biography of Zachariah Hopper. In this biography, Zachariah states that his mother was Sarah McKinney and that she died in 1842 in Rabun Co., GA at forty-nine years of age [source 22].
There is a Samuel Hopper enumerated on the 1820 U.S. Census of Giles Co., TN [source 3]; presumably, this is "our" Samuel (again, haven't verified that this family was in TN at that time). If so, the children listed here were probably Caroline, Henry and Charles. The third male may have been the unknown male who showed up on the 1840 U.S. Census enumerated in Samuel's household, or possibly it was Jasper, who was born in July 1820 [source 4].
I have not yet found a census record for Samuel for 1830. Samuel Hopper of Andersons District, Rabun Co., GA was granted land in the 1832 Georgia "Gold" Land Lottery located in Cherokee Co., GA (Lot 914, 3rd District, 3rd Section) [source 26]. He was also granted land in the 1832 Georgia "Cherokee" Land Lottery; this land was also located in Cherokee Co., GA (Lot 189, 16th District, 1st Section) [source 27]. Samuel claimed both pieces of land on June 7, 1843 (possibly, he had his son, Charles, file the pertinent claims for him). I hoped to find a record of Samuel selling this land, but could not. I did find that Samuel's son, Charles, sold land 1840, 1841, 1846 and 1849 in Cherokee Co., GA, but apparently not the tracts his father owned [source 28].
At any rate, to be eligible to draw in the 1832 Land Lotteries, one had to be a 3 year resident of the Georgia. Samuel qualified for two draws as a married man with a wife and minor children (assuming the 3-year residency and citizenship in the United States). According to 1832 Georgia Gold Lottery by Silas Emmett Lucas, he received three draws, the third being Lot 1251, District 3, Section 4 of Cherokee Co., GA; however, I could not find the actual record for the third draw. At this time, I do not know exactly where Samuel and his family were during that three year time period, only that they were in Rabun County in time for Samuel to claim residency there for the purposes of those land grants.
On a previous trip to the Georgia State Archives (March 2007), I managed to photocopy the entire 1836 Tax Digest for Rabun County. Samuel paid 55 cents for one poll, one slave and a total of 940 acres of land. Samuel's sons Charles and Henry were also listed; each paid 16 cents for one poll [source 30]. It was about this time that those two sons were also first drawn for jury duty: Charles in 1834, and Henry in 1837 [sources 31 and 32].
Samuel was enumerated with his family in the 1840 U.S. Census, Rabun Co., GA [source 5]. Charles and Caroline, two of the elder children, had already moved out of Samuel’s household and had children of their own [sources 6 and 12]. The remaining children were still living with Samuel: Henry, Jasper, Zachariah, Thomas, John A., Joseph, Sarah Adaline and Flora Ann. An unknown male was also living with Samuel in this census, probably the unknown male who was listed in Samuel’s household in the 1820 census of Giles Co., TN.
The 1850 U.S. Census of Rabun Co., GA finds Samuel living with children Zachariah, John, Joseph and Sarah [source 9]. The other children had all married and moved out on their own by this time, excepting the unknown male who, if he was a son of Samuel, appears to have died before 1850 as later records make no mention of him [sources 7, 8 and 10]. Sometime during this time, Samuel’s son Charles had moved out of Rabun County, settling first in Cherokee Co., GA before moving on to Murray Co., GA and then Arkansas [sources 10, 23, 24 and 25].
I recently learned that Samuel owned a slave in 1850, described in the Slave Schedule as a 70-year old black female [source 16]. She was not listed in the estate records of Samuel Hopper, so I'm not sure what happened to her between 1850 and Samuel's death. One possibility is that she went to live with Sam's daughter, Sarah Adaline, upon her marriage to Henry Gillespie in 1852. Henry and Sarah did have a slave living with them in 1860, a 75-year-old black woman [source 19]. On the 1870 Census of Rabun County, an elderly black woman named Coosa Hopper was living near Sam's son Jasper Hopper [source 20]. It's possible that these three records refer to the same woman, but further research is needed before any conclusions can be drawn.
Samuel died sometime before December 1857, when Henry Hopper, Thomas Hopper and A. J. Martin made application for Letters of Administration for the estate of Samuel Hopper [source 17]. In a deed dated April 1858, Samuel's heirs were listed as Charles, Henry, Caroline, Jasper, Zachariah, Thomas, John, Joseph, Flora Ann and Sarah Adaline [source 10]. Samuel is buried in the cemetery of the Head of Tennessee Baptist Church in Dillard. His tombstone gives his birth year as 1762 and his death year as 1845 but these dates seem unlikely when compared to other contemporary records.
Many of Samuel’s grandchildren are still unknown to me since several of his children left the area at about the time of his death. Charles, as previously stated, moved first to Cherokee Co., GA, then to Murray Co., GA and then to Greene Co., Arkansas. Zachariah eventually settled in Franklin County, Arkansas, and Sarah Adaline Hopper Gillespie seems to have disappeared altogether. I finally proved conclusively (to myself, anyway) that Flora Ann Hopper Norton was the first wife of Barak Norton, but I still have a long way to go on this family!
Sources:
© 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 D&C Research Group
