Joshua Hopkins and the Hopkins Family of Alcester

Joshua Hopkins (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 Head Hopkins, died in July 1782, aged 40 (see Jacqui Snowdon, The Alcester Baptist Story 1640-1990 [Alcester, 1990], 21).  They were married on 18 March 1766. 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. with lively pleasures 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 the 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, and Ernest A. Payne, “Some Samuel Pearce Documents,” Baptist Quarterly 18.1 (January 1959), 26-34; and Payne, “The Diaries of Joseph Ash,” Baptist Quarterly 22.7 (July 1986), 352-59, where he writes that John Ash's “eldest daughter, Anne — our Joseph's sister — married Joshau Hopkins (died 1798), of Alcester, and their daughter, Sarah, became in 1791 wife of Samuel Pearce . . .” (353).

Elizabeth Ash (1752-1829) was Joshua Hopkins's second wife; she was the eldest daughter of John Ash (1724-79), Baptist minister at Pershore, 1751-79. John Ash married Elizabeth Goddard in 1751 and had six children: Elizabeth (born at Pershore on 13 July 1752), Samuel, Joseph, Martha, Sarah and Luezar (see G. H. Taylor, “The Reverend John Ash, LL.D. 1724-1779, Baptist Quarterly 20 [1963-64], 8). Elizabeth was also well known to the Steeles of Broughton (William Steele III, Caleb Evans, and John Ash were all close friends) and she appears in the correspondence of Mary Steele (1753-1813) (for Mary Steele's correspondence, see Timothy Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 [London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3). Joshua Hopkins married Elizabeth Ash on 29 January 1789 at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire; the witnesses were Caleb Evans, Selina Bompas (a member at Broadmead in Bristol where Caleb Evans was the minister), Sarah Ash, and Joseph Ash (the latter two both younger siblings of Elizabeth).  The year following her marriage she joined the congregation in Alcester. The Alcester Church Book notes: “Mrs Eliza Hopkins received by letter from the Baptist Church at Pershore April 10th 1790.” Joshua and Eliza had at least one child, a son, John Ash Hopkins, born on 27 July 1791 and entered into the birth record by James Smith at the Baptist chapel in Alcester. Eliza’s youngest brother, Joseph Ash, lived and worked in Birmingham for a time after marriage during the 1790s before relocating to Bristol, where he joined the Baptist congregation at Broadmead under John Ryland, jun. His 7-volume diary can be found in the Angus Library. He includes some letters as well. 

Eliza Hopkins remarried on 11 March 1802 to William Hemming of Alcester. The ceremony took place at St. Paul's Church, Portland Square, Bristol, officiated by a Mr. Day (a relation of Susanna Ash, wife of Elizabeth's brother Joseph) and witnessed by Eliza's younger siblings Sarah, Samuel, and Joseph Ash.  They returned to Alcester, where Eliza lived out the rest of her life, remaining a constant member, along with the remaining members of the Hopkins and Hemming families, in the Baptist congregation at Alcester. She died there on 15 July 1829.

Joshua Hopkins's daughter from his first marriage, Sarah Hopkins (1771-1804), 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.   

Below is the marriage record of Joshua Hopkins and Elizabeth Ash on 29 January 1789 (Gloucestershire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1938, St. Mary Parish, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, p. 56; Gloucestershire, England, Church of England Baptists, Marriages, and Burials, 1538-1813: Tewkesbury, 1570-1812). Also below is the birth record of John Ash Hopkins, son of Joshua and Eliza Hopkins, born 27 July 1791 (England and Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1936, RG4: Register of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, Worcestershire, Baptists, piece 2016: Feckenham, Astwood Chapel, Worcestershire, and Alcester, Warwickshire (Baptist), 1788-1837, p. 4).  The final image is the marriage record of Eliza Ash Hopkins and William Hemming at Bristol, on 11 March 1802 (Bristol, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1938, Parish Records for Bristol, Portland Square, St. Paul, 1794-1805, p. 1968).