Sarah Hopkins Pearce

Sarah Hopkins Pearce (1771-1804) was the daughter of Joshua Hopkins (1738-98), a deacon in the Baptist church at Alcester (see his entry in this Index), a town about 20 miles south of Birmingham, near Ragley.  Her mother, Anna Hopkins, died in 1782. S. Pearce Carey believed that her mother was the eldest daughter of John Ash, Baptist minister at Pershore, an assertion repeated thereafter by nearly all commentators on Pearce. Unfortunately, that assertion is incorrect. Her father remarried in 1786, this time to Elizabeth Ash or Pershore, who was indeed the eldest daughter of John Ash. She was Sarah's stepmother, but not her mother. 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. Fuller says”in the year 1791, he married Miss Sarah Hopkins, daughter of Mr. Joshua Hopkins of Alcester” (Memoirs 17).  They had five children.  Mrs. Pearce lived from 1771-1804.  According to her husband's memoir, she “discovered tokens of religious concern about twelve months before her marriage” (276).  She was baptized by Samuel Pearce on 20 November 1791 (217).  Included in this memoir are some letters by Sarah Pearce to a Mrs. Harwood of Bristol (the wife of James Harwood, who formerly lived in Birmingham and attended at Cannon Street), a Mrs. Franklin of Coventry (these Franklins were related to the Franklins who would later found the famous Stoneygate school in Leicester), and a Miss Sprigg of Birmingham.  In a letter to Mrs. Harwood, dated 25 December 1799, 11 weeks after Samuel’s death, she writes: “In vain, alas, in vain I seek him whose presence gave a zest to every enjoyment!  I wander about the house as one bereft of her better half. I go into the study--I say to myself, There is the chair he occupied, there are the books he read; but where, oh where is the owner?  I come into the parlour---there my tenderest feelings are awakened by four fatherless children” (278).  Her youngest child, Samuel, died on 11 July 1800, aged one and a half (279). Quotations above taken from Memoirs of the late Rev. Samuel Pearce, A.M. with extracts from some of his most interesting letters.  Compiled by Andrew Fuller, D.D. to which are added, An Oration, delivered at the grave by the Rev. J. Brewer.  A funeral sermon on his death, by J. Ryland, D.D.  An Elegy, by Benjamin Francis, A.M.  Together with The Memoir of Mrs. Pearce, and extracts from letters (3rd American edition.  Philadelphia: John Hellings, 1809).